TSA Expands Selectee Checkpoint Program
 

TSA Expands Selectee Checkpoint Program




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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin

Yep, now all the selectees will be screened at the checkpoint instead of the gates, so no more/greatly reduced gate screening at yet another airport. Thats how we have been doing it for many months now.

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"Be the inferior of no man, nor be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart." William Saroyan, American Playwright

This miserable agency should eliminate the selectee program completely! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mad.gif

Idiotic harassment is still idiotic harassment, no matter where it takes place.

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"Give me Liberty or give me Death." - Patrick Henry

Spiff...you know good and well that the "selectee" program was in place WAY before the TSA. Rant and rave all you want, it is quite funny.


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"Be the inferior of no man, nor be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart." William Saroyan, American Playwright

And you know good and well it was an extremely rare event when someone was given selectee-screening pre-TSA. Your miserable agency has expanded this harassment to no good end.



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"Give me Liberty or give me Death." - Patrick Henry

The only "selectees" we encounter are the ones generated by the airline.

Not true!

Your agency selects passengers for extra screening. And the airlines had far fewer SSSS selectees before your agency came into existence. There is more than a casual connection between those two events.



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"Give me Liberty or give me Death." - Patrick Henry

Please -- allow me to complete your sentence for you...
at the request of the Federal government.


To imply that the airlines are responsible for this stretches the limits of credulity.

[This message has been edited by xyzzy (edited 07-09-2003).]

Given the Nazi practice of "selection" (for gas chamber vs. work) it's pretty ugly to use the term selectee.

It's pretty ugly to insert overwrought comparisons to Nazism into every discussion about the TSA.

Sorry Spiff, but the airlines issue the bag tags, and the bag tags inform us of the selectee status. Whatever is in place, was in place before we arrived. I'm thinking FAA.

Well, lessee...

The well-balanced TSA screener in Seattle Monday decided to call the supervisor, because... GG was not gung-ho for the chit-chat. That's right, we got called on not being cheerful enough.

Fortunately, the supervisor was intelligent and seemed truly interested in discerning threats from noise. I explained that we did not care for their procedures, did not care to be condescended to about how much we should like them, but were very focussed on proving we were not a threat and getting through to our flight.

We were passed through with no more than normal crap.

But that initial screener was on the ultimate power trip!

Tell me, why should we PRETEND we like this stupid system? I know enough about statistics to know how worthless it is... and then the *itch at the screening machine wants us to pretend we like it? Well, we don't. It's crap, and they should be told that occasionally.

And the ones on a power trip should be fired.

Osama wins again! Aren't you happy?

I haven't but it's not a bad idea.

I understand why we have the screening, but it is fighting the war of the past. I would rather they give every able bodied passenger a knife to defend the cabin if necessary, keep the cockpit door locked, and disperse the TSA employees around the airport perimeter to make sure there is no one ready to take down an airliner with a shoulder-fired Stinger.

What I fear is a random attack on an airliner, or worse yet, a coordinated attack where Stingers are fired at 10-15 airliners at different locations simultaneously. But at least all the pax on those planes will not have any nail files, screwdrivers or corkscrews!

Ya know, I live about 6 miles from my airport and the planes are low enough outside that anyone who was so inclined and had a stinger could take one down from 6-8 miles away from the airport. If it is going to happen, it will not be near an airport.

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"Be the inferior of no man, nor be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart." William Saroyan, American Playwright

Please read again -- the point is that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is doing this, NOT the airlines. The airlines (except DL http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif ) are complicitous only to the extent that they are required to be.

Obviously TSA & the screening processes is a 'hot' topic on both sides, and I don't usually post on it. I don't feel as strongly about either side of the issue as some of you do.

But I'm absolutely stunned & appalled that anyone would compare TSA & Nazis - there is a world - and was a war - of difference.

Regardless of different viewpoints, those type of comments, I think, are inappropriate and I would like to think we're more mature and professional than to say things like that.



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Sharon

I think the appropriate response is "Godwin's Law - you lose" followed by an immediate end to the discussion.


(for more info than you ever wanted to know about Godwin's Law -- look here.)

We could be so lucky.

We really need an Anti-TSA forum, because "In the News" is now mostly articles that are critical of the TSA to which all the anti-TSA FlyerTalkers add their own anti-TSA comments to.

I happen to have few issues with the TSA, but I understand those who have had numerous poor experiences with and I also understand that much of what the TSA is being chartered to do (often by Congress and the Administration) is, in the "big picture", highly ineffective at preventing a terrorist attack.

Besides, National Intellegence Assets seem to be doing a great job of keeping tabs on the terrorists and nipping their plans in the bud well before they get past the "How bout we..." stage. And when Point(yhead)dexter gets his "Eye of Sauron" intelligence-gathering system, well, no bad thoughts will go unnoticed and everything will be hunky-dory.

I have no way of knowing, but suspect that to the average German of the era the home guard did not seem to talk with funny accents and slink around spouting comic opera commands- rather, they were just regular people, just like the average German, perceived as just doing their job. And trying to protect them all from what was perceived as an insidious enemy.

That the citizens had to produce papers and restrict their movements to directives of these officials of a democratically-elected government was something suffered for the greater good.

I'm not saying I support the analogy, but I suspect that's the viewpoint of some that are making it.

Plz read again, I stated that this was in place before we arrived. TSA had nothing to do with selectee status.

Then please tell me why we are spending billions of dollars searching for harmless pointy objects when there are much larger holes in security????

There is a residential neighborhood directly across the street from where a unway starts/ends at BWI. I have driven down this road when planes are landing. It wouldn't take a stinger to shoot one down.



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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin

<sigh>

That may be the case but the TSA is an arm of the Federal Government. So -- the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is perpetrating this nonsense and the TSA is "just following orders" (uh oh -- I might be violating Godwin's Law myself!)

Because those "harmless" pointy objects (well, edged objects) brought down four aircraft, two skyscrapers, and killed thousands of people.

We may find many of these policies relatively ineffective and pointless, but the average public still seems to think it makes them safer. And with the media hyping every breach as the "next 9/11", the government telling us terrorism can happen "any minute" (Code Yellow) and occasionally telling us it is even more probable (Code Orange), the average public continues to show fear about flying - it's the ultra low fares that are convincing them to "take their chances".

Prior to 9/11, people could take four-inch blades aboard a plane. Then a handful of people use frelling boxcutters to pull off 9/11. Is it any wonder the public demanded everything with a point be yanked?

The problem with this policy now is cockpit doors are now essentially invulnerable to everything short of an assault rifle or the Jaws of Life. Which is why the TSA has "lightened up" a little (they now allow nail files again, I think).

Still, they need to "lighten up" more. For one, the metal detectors are still set way too sensative (I have never set off a detector at any government facility, while the same outfit is guaranteed to set off an airport detector.

Also, while I do not support bringing knives back aboard, things like scissors and such should not be banned items as they cannot penetrate a cockpit and the flight attendants and passengers are now considered "expendable", so it would not (or should not) change the minds of the flight crew in a hostage situation.

Unfortunately, Richard Reid made shoes a weapon. I'm not sure how an x-ray helps detect plastic explosive (can it be seen?), but at least they are not swabbing them for explosives (that would really slow things down).

Of course, the future is things like the backscatter x-ray machine and the "personal explosives sniffer" used at the CN Tower, for example. That way, people do not have to "disrobe" and can just spend a few moments in the scanner, be cleared, and move on. This should help reduce waits and would negate the need for secondary screening, which I think help contributes to the "traffic jam" as SS'ed folks come back to grab their goodies or their companions stand around waiting for them.

[This message has been edited by SEA_Tigger (edited 07-11-2003).]

As far as I know the process of upgrading cockpit doors is still in progress.

Well, we should be getting pretty close - not to mention it is in the airline's interests to complete it ASAP so they can crow how "safe" they are. I believe a review of banned items can start now, since it will take months to implement, anyway. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Cockpit-door replacement was required by law to be completed by April 2003 -- at least in the U.S. I believe that it has been accomplished. Thus, we don't really need to be concerned about tiny scissors and the like any longer.

Bruce

Not that I worry about tiny scissors, but what about all the Canadian and other international aircraft that use the same terminals and aren't retrofitted yet?

Well, I'm not an expert on this, but I believe that all aircraft using U.S. airports must have the new doors. I may be wrong about that.

I suppose someone could hijack a plane in Canada and fly it into the U.S., but eventually you get into some pretty remote contingencies, as we actuaries say!

Bruce

Yeah, I was kinda of talking out of my arse there. I don't know either.

Really? When was the last time you heard of government officials creating a line and then choosing some of them using the term "selectee."

My original post:

"Given the Nazi practice of "selection" (for gas chamber vs. work) it's pretty ugly to use the term selectee."

does not compare the TSA itself to the Nazis, but the term "selectee" to the Nazi's "selection" for the gas chambers.

However, the erosion of individual rights encompassed by the entire anti-terrorism effort is troublesome and to the extent that criticism of one's behavior by comparison to an accepted evil is OK with me.

We must never cease condemning the Nazis. Otherwise people will forget. Look at Ann Coulter resurrecting Joe McCarthy and making a small fortune at it. Maybe we haven't been trashing McCathyism enough lately.

When the TSA starts installing forced abour camps and ovens at airports then maybe you'll have a point. Plus those nasty Nazis weren't PC; they used racial profiling. We're random.

Random, my arse. There are a lot of random, selectees, but the percentage of minorities and women selected as a percentage of the travelling population is multiples higher. [The reasons for this are multiple, some very P.C., some as P.C. as the KKK.]

[This message has been edited by GUWonder (edited 07-12-2003).]

You're wrong.

I have been known to be wrong before. ;-)

Oh come on, now you ruined it. I wanted to get into a childish tit for tat argument http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

A single Stinger missile will not take down an airliner. A Stinger will shut down an engine (if it hits). Two Stingers could, in theory, turn an airliner into a glider with degraded aerodynamics, which might or might not make it to a suitable airfield.

Stingers are unlikely to be the missile of choice against airliners for cost reasons. A Soviet SA-7 would be about equally effective against an airliner at a third of the Stinger's cost (recent black market prices).

It's perhaps likely that an airliner could survive a missile strike to one of the engine pods, but if the missile impacted on the wing or the center fuel tanks I think that would be another story. I don't think it's public knowledge how Stingers are programmed to seek. I don't know if they seek the absolute hottest source (the engines) or if they seek the center of the whole IR image of the aircraft.

A Stinger strike that causes the engine to explode can also possibly shear through the hydraulic system, leading to loss of control and then loss of the plane.

While most airplanes have multiple hydrualic systems, they often seem to be run very close to each other so a catastrophic failure near one often takes out the others (especially on DC-10 aircraft).

This is very public knowledge, especially amongst certain Afghanis and Pakistanis. One of our Made In the USA stinger missiles went through a wall of someone in Kashmir, India a few years back. Was it the center of the whole IR image or the hottest spot of the wall? In either case, I bet you that guy probably did not attend training or slept through it. ;-)

One thing is certain. It was a mistake to arm the Afghans and Pakistanis ... and it was an even bigger mistake to funnel resources to them via Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda brethren and the ISI, CIA and Saudi Intelligence.

In politics, the dog will always consider biting the hand that feeds it. In political powerplays where violence is resorted, Frankensteins are created.

[This message has been edited by GUWonder (edited 07-15-2003).]