MikeMpls

Based on my experience at STL today -- Yes!

Neither the supervisor and especially not the "front-liner" had the discipline or skills to be dealing with the public in that situation. Even after the supervisor indicated I could resume proceeding through the screening lane, the "front liner" was obstructive and continued her efforts to provoke a reponse from me.

These are rogue employees of a rogue agency.

essxjay

Good grief! If fallacies of logic is all there is to getting an M.A., then I'm paying through the nose torturing myself over the tensionality of Time, defending naive realism and arguing about ethical intuitionism until 3 a.m.! Seriously, I'd like the PO Box of this degree mill, b/c I'm getting the fiscal shaft from my local Big State University, and a whole lotta intellectual grief, to boot.

Grad level critical thinking, I ask you ....

robvberg

Mke, much of what you say is partially correct but you are wrong about many things. I don't have time to go point by point but I wrote alot right after 9-11 about keejerk response from congress and the press. First liquid bombs are definitely possible. I don't know what chemists you are referring to but it is easy to point out that true nitro is a liquid. I also had several instructors that were in special forces up through the late 80's. All of the team engineers were trained in making explosives from various chemical bases. Now where most experts agree is that it is difficult to work with these types and that nitro was abandoned generally because of the danger and death caused by its instability. Several types of breaching explosives have been developed and tested by the military that would look very close to a toothpaste. The three ounce limit is nonsense except, they needed to choose a limit. You could always ..... about the limit they choose but they had to choose an amount.

But my biggest complaint is your belief that unsreened cargo is the biggest threat. Electronics are becoming more advanced and so it will become easier to make your altitude activated bomb at some point. But do you really think you are so much smarter than all of the terrorist groups that have been trying to attack us? There have been several bombings in cargo holds. No one knows for sure exactly how many and how they were activated. Yet why have we not seen more? most were back in the 80's. the answer is that it is not really that easy. I mean come on, why do you think that they Al Qaeda tried to launch its first spectacular bombing plot out of manila like they did. They knew that it is easier to bring down the plane with an explosive in the cabin, with a timer than it is any other way. the Libyans used a states capabilities and its intel/government assests to do Locerbie and the french plane. there are too many things that can not be plotted when terrorists have looked at risk/cost/reward of your 'plan'.

Look I will more than agree with you that much of what is done is not always logical or effective, but I have looked at terrorism and CT since high school in the early 80's. There are no easy answers and some basic reasons, even though distorted for most of the policies in place. Could some of your or my suggestions be effective, of course but if you were assigned the job of coming up with security policies like you outlined above. I could together an terrorist Op much easier than I could under the present system.


Lastly an answer about lighters. A lighter especially some of the blow torch(survival) style lighters could ignite explosives that would not be possible with matches. A match is not a hot enough or steady enough flame for causing a detonation. So what would be your solution? tell inspectors to let through simple bic lighters but inspect and pull out highend lighters from the simple lighters. How does that simplify the process?

TKarma

Jammer, I personally, have a lot more to do on this earth and would not rather have it cut short by boarding another Flight 93. Sorry, if you don't agree.

Giving up freedoms, you say? These freedoms are exactly how the terrorists managed to knock down two towers in NY on 9/11, etc, etc. They used our freedoms. I'm all for freedom and feel we have plenty of it with the help of the ACLU, blah, blah, blah...but now people like our near and dear OP are starting to get cocky about it.

It makes me sick to see that people are saying on this forum to tell the ACLU. The ACLU is the organization that is wanting to give the terrorists rights. Terrorists don't have any rights in this country. Period.

Again, I say, pranks and immaturity do not belong at screening areas at airports....but you'll be able to find the OP's "quoted" baggie T-shirt for sale on e-bay in the next few weeks. Now that's freedom.

robvberg

I am not sure why other than to push buttons you would say you are doing this to exercise your first amendment rights. You could have done the same thing by holding a sign outside an airport, in washington dc etc. You only put this as noted by others in a place that could be seen by a TSA agent. You are putting it to the one person who really has limited input in the policies. This action is no different than when the KKK goes to protest in a minority or jewish area, when the orange order marches through a catholic area of belfast. they are doing it to provoke a response. the response was overboard. Do I believe that Mke was hyped up and a little comabtive, yes. You can read it in his own words. He says don't I have a right to say what I want. He is intelligent and I am sure kept his voice even but he was looking for a reaction and got it. If that is what he and others want great. You did not right this down knowing they would be seen and not expect a reaction. that is not even plausible.

What you don't want to admit is that someone who says they are fedup and pushed by the security stupidy, rough quote? is a possible threat. I seem to be hearing that the guy who went off yesterday and killed the girls said that he was just tired and had to make a statement/ get revenge for some incident before. AGAIN BEFORE FLAMING ME, I do not think Mke or any of the others are going to go on a rampage over this. You are just pieved, but someone that has pent up frustrations who gets a little drunk could easily become combative on a flight. To just completely ignore your statement without atleast thinking and looking at the passenger, would be wrong. just as not atleast thinking that the guy in the irish bar with a shirt saying PARAs 12 bogsiders 0 is out to cause a scene. (Me after having the IRA rocket heathrow as my plane was landing.)

2smrt4u

Essxjay, I don't know how far back you went to pull GUwonders quote but if you'd also read further you'd see that the two are in fact two separate things. To think critically you must be able to read through the fallacies that people present in their arguments. As much as GU would like us all to believe there are actually VERY few people in society who can think critically VERY well, even really smart people. Not even him and not even me (the difference was I made an attempt to sort the fallacy to understand the original posting), as is quite evident on this board. I will be earning a Master of Science not Art, but regardless critical thinking is applicable to every day life not some degree program. If you think it's such a joke then you are clearly not getting enough out of your own education so you'd be best to refrain from slamming others.

essxjay

I'll chip in my $.02 worth, having just gone the through FOIA drill.

Tops off, expect an answer in the very far future, seeing as how you're dealing with a department that's probably a very popular target for FOI queries. (Even my yawner of a request for the meeting minutes at Malta and Yalta took 3 months for the first response (beyond the obligatory confirmation of your written request) and they still eff'ed it up. I started my query on January 25th, and it's still dragging on and on and on.)

Basically, the better you understand the process up front, the higher your chances of getting the info you want. If you don't file the request using the correct terminology, precision of meaning and specificity to the correct agency, you start all over again.

Here's a good starter page on the whole schema of FOIA filings:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/foia/guide.html

If you PM me later, I'll dig up the two URL's I have buried somewhere given to me by my university's gov't documents librarian that proved *extremely* helpful resources in knowing how to file, where to file, whom to address it and what to ask for.

Then again, maybe the ACLU is already doing it???

essxjay

Glad to hear that memo of mine finally made the rounds! ^

2s4u, I was being s-a-r-c-a-s-t-i-c in my previous post (to GU). You know sarcasm, one of the other brands of protected speech?


And just for good measure, I was also poking A LOT of fun at myself, being a grad student in philosophy 'n' all.

If you choose to stick around, you might find some excellent examples of strong argumentation and sound reasoning. I know my thinking skills have sharpened considerably from all the time I've spent reading and posting to FT, and this practice has served me very, very well in grad school so far.

studentff

Lighters were banned due to a rider inserted into a bill by two anti-smoking Senators (Wyden and Dorgan of OR and ND) not due to security. If it had been due to security considerations, it would have been TSA, not Congress, instituting the ban, and it wouldn't have happened years after the Richard Reid incident. Any time Congress tinkers with some low-level detail like the prohibited items list, it should raise suspicion about the genuine reasons. The reason the lighter ban is silly is that it is completely unenforcable. The only reason they didn't ban matches is that they knew they were indetectable; but they failed to realize that a small lighter will also make it through a metal detector without an alarm.

So the lighter ban ends up affecting only overly-honest people, not terrorists and not even innocent people who are willing to smuggle a lighter in their pocket. How does that improve security?

Liquid ban suffers the same problem; a small container of shampoo/lotion/toothpaste in a pocket is undetectable and there's no way (yet) they can get away with banning perscriptions and baby formula, so why bother to harass the rest of us when there are such big gaps in the system?

exerda

There's no "spin" involved. Hassles that impede the exercise of one's fundamental rights are penalties, plain and simple. Had the OP not exercised that right, there would arguably have been no hassling involved. It has nothing to do with America being wimped down. In fact, that you are willing to accept such hassles so easily is IMHO far more damning proof of said wimping down than the argument you cite.

exerda

I will argue that it IS Orwellian, and having one of my degrees in literature I think I am qualified to make that statement (others are in scientific fields, but I figured I'd toss out the one that matters here).

How so? The government, through its agents the TSA officials (and in small part the LEO) attempted to stifle the OP's expression of an opinion that disagreed with them. Just because the OP was not arrested by the gestapo and rushed off for brainwashing does not mean the incident is not an illustration of the principles of Newspeak and Thought Police at work.

I just don't see why so many people don't get that it does not require that the OP actually have been prevented entirely from his expression of opinion (had the bag confiscated, been arrested, etc.) to violate his rights on the matter. As lawyers have pointed out, Google "chilling effect." And putting up barriers to free expression--here, a 25-minute harassment, not to mention the incorrect statements by the TSA that the OP's rights did not apply at the checkpoint--serves to discourage that expression by itself.

2smrt4u

Got it, with the way people have been the last couple of days, anything positive in relation to my posts have been far and few between. I got so use to addressing people slamming me that I didn't get to say much on the original topic. I will tell you that I completely agree with your last paragraph, just in the last two days the skills I have learned thus far were put to very good use.

19103_aa

I found this posted on CNN's main page while in Barcelona. Cheers to the OP for his poised comments in the article. This kind of scenario may be the kind of "Willy Horton" needed to galvanize interest in making sense out of this foolish situation.

Yaatri

ARe you saying our Govt knows everything you or I know? HAve yo forgotten WMDs?

doctall41

Does this thread hold the FT record for the most visits?