They can "insert their hands between underwear and skin"?!!!? WTF?! I usually think that if you have nothing to hide, then what's the big deal - but this is outrageous. I'm freaked out about flying, even though we have no holiday travel plans.

Strangely enough, I am traveling tomorrow by plane, but because my flight originates outside of the United States, I won't be subjected to this nonsense. I fully and wholeheartedly support this protest. This is nothing more than security theater and I am tired of it. There was an interesting comment on the NYTimes page this morning about how the company that manufactures the back scatter body scanners is actually owned (at least partly) by Michael Chertoff. The man is a terrorist that we just call by another name. War profiteer, that's what I suppose I would call him.

"Children under 12 are NOT exempt from patdowns, but will receive "modified" patdowns instead."

FUCK THAT. I have done all this work with my kid on appropriate touching, and now I just supposed to let some random TSA person "modified" grope her for security purposes?

I feel like we have reached the point where I would prefer to just take my fucking chances on being blown up rather than be subjected to this. We (meaning airline travelers and crew) have a pretty good record (since 9/11) of noticing and reacting effectively to people acting sketchy on airplanes.

My favorite part about all this is that some folks have been griping about harsh measures and security theater for almost a decade, but it wasn't till a white male worried about somebody "touching his junk" that the country hit Threat Level: Freakout.

Wait, isn't Opt-Out Day Wednesday, two days from now?

Wait, isn't Opt-Out Day Wednesday, two days from now?


It is. The title of the post is a mistake of wishful thinking. (Ever had a Monday that you wished could be at least a Tuesday?)

Though if I were flying tomorrow, after my groping, I'd make a "friendly" joke about having helped them get warmed up for "the big game" on Wednesday.

Quotation marks optional, though. It's good to remember that they're pawns in this game too.

Like you never had a boss order you to do some dumb shit?

I am not going through one of those scanners, ever. For our upcoming December vacation out of the country, we are allowing extra time at the airport for the legal molestation experience. I'm planning to report anything untoward, pronto, to the ACLU, and am looking for the chance to sign onto a lawsuit about this so called security procedures. I've had it with TSA trampling all over the fourth amendment in the name of protecting us from terrorism -- we are simply surrendering our freedom in exchange for nothing at all.

I'm het up enough about all this to have finally joined the ACLU, and for everyone's information here is their fact sheet about the screening procedures, and here is their form for reporting wrongful behavior by TSA.

Man, I get annoyed about having to take my laptop and umbrella out of my backpack and empty my pockets. Apart from 'random' swab tests for explosives, that's all we have to do for domestic travel here.

These measures are totally insane, by any measure. They are also totally ineffective - there simply is no way to truly protect against terrorism and, in fact, all this crap does is set up a false sense of security. Good on you, bearwife, for not taking the easy route - I hope enough people join you that it makes a difference.

The LA Times does its best to promote obedience with its editorial: "Shut up and be scanned".

Psst

Indeed. Younger Boy is disappointed, but our next vacation is via train.

I'm curious about the age breakdown of protesters vs. for lack of a better word, submitters.

If the protesters are in their 40's and the submitters are in their 20's-30's, we're toast.

I'm kind of anxious, thinking about how many protesters could get harrased by their fellow travelers.

What if the underwear bomber had been successful in bringing down the plane he was on? Well, firstly, I doubt that we would know much about exactly how the explosives were brought onto the plane, but still.

I am curious about what people think an appropriate level of security IS. What should the gov't be doing?

What should the gov't be doing?

Ending our wars in Muslim countries.

I am curious about what people think an appropriate level of security IS. What should the gov't be doing?

What if everyone who flies has to get a full background check first?
What if everyone had to be strip searched?
OK, what about a cavity search? It's the only way to be really sure.
What about being issued a standard Tyvek suit to wear during flight after surrenduring your own clothing, which will be returned to you at your final destination?
What about requiring that everyone wear handcuffs so that no one could use an iPod cable or something like to to garrotte an attendant taken hostage?

What I'm saying is that if you really want to be 100% sure that no terrorist attack will take place on your plane, there are ways to do that, except that they start to look a little bit like incarceration. So I think maybe we really don't want to be 100% sure, because even this kind of scan isn't going to provide that. Given that we're OK with less than 100% sure, how much less are we willing to accept? Americans have tolerated a lot of increasing complication in flight preparation, but this is not sitting comfortably.

And this measure doesn't even really protect anything other than domestic flghts. Flights originating elsewhere could still blow up and take out targets on land. So we aren't even really gaining much in the way of attack protection, but in the meantime we're incurring tremendous cost in time, equipment, and personnell and probably doing some permanent damage to the air travel industry.

This response to the full-body scans seems to say that Americans are willing to accept a little bit more risk in return for a little bit more dignity and sanity.

It seems to me that in some of these recent cases, like Reid and the underwear bomber, the problem could have been prevented at boarding or at the time of ticket purchase. It seems to me the government should be paying more attention to what is happening on the ground , who is cleared for travel, and who is near the gate, and more attention to the non-racial kinds of profiles these clowns tend to all have: last-minute ticket purchase, in cash, problems with papers, no checked luggage, etc. - and less to our clothing. It seems to me we should not be looking for bombs, but bombers.

I printed this out and was all prepared to be polite but firm . . . and my airport still had the old metal detectors! Which I preferred to confrontation, frankly.

So far, the only unpleasantness I have experienced was some dickwad in Dallas who took me aside to test my old grody watchband for explosives. Seriously, he painted some compound on this dirty woven nylon band that made it even uglier.

This was after a cancellation in which a lot of us were going back and forth through security in order to line up other flights.

I actually can't say I'm among those who are all het up about this. I don't like it much, but I'm not flying for some time, and I figure I'll just wait this out and see what happens. The people I feel sorriest for are those who have to look at my body on a naked scanner.

In the event, if flying keeps getting more and more a pain in the ass, it will be a good thing for train and bus transport, so there's a potential gain.

What if everyone who flies has to get a full background check first?
I don't have facts on this, but I bet there are plenty of potential terrorists with a completely clean background.

What if everyone had to be strip searched?
OK, what about a cavity search? It's the only way to be really sure.
What about being issued a standard Tyvek suit to wear during flight after surrenduring your own clothing, which will be returned to you at your final destination?
What's to stop someone literally swallowing a bomb set on a timer?

What about requiring that everyone wear handcuffs so that no one could use an iPod cable or something like to to garrotte an attendant taken hostage?
They'd just use the handcuffs themselves to do the same thing.

My (obvious, to me at least) point is that there is no possible way to be safe from attack. Putting these ridiculous conditions in place only pushes terrorists to take precautions that ensure they can't possibly be detected. I'm inclined to think that less stringent requirements may actually be more effective, because those who might want to launch an attack will be easier to detect - the amount of effort they use to avoid detection will always be just above the methods of detection and, as the detection methods ramp up, so will the avoidance measures.

What I'm saying is that if you really want to be 100% sure that no terrorist attack will take place on your plane, there are ways to do that...
No, there aren't.

Sure, there need to be reasonable precautions taken but the hard truth is that there is a risk involved with, well, living. Where does this all end? Cavity searches to enter a shopping mall or sports arena? These farcical and ineffective measures being put in place are a complete lose-lose situation - the security services are so busy feeling up passengers that their focus is taken away from real risks and terrorists will just decide to start blowing up trains and shopping malls instead.

It seems to me that the measures in place in Australia are about right - metal detectors, scanning of carry-on luggage, random explosive swab tests and, most importantly, a high focus on intelligence-gathering to try and detect planned attacks. The most onerous thing that we've had to deal with has been photo ID at check-in, which has been abandoned anyway and this is no longer asked for. What really worries me, as a regular flyer, is that there will be pressure to implement the same sort of measures here. Then I'll really start getting cranky!

My (obvious, to me at least) point is that there is no possible way to be safe from attack.

dg....did you get that I completely agree with you on every point? I was trying to take the argument toward more extreme conclusions to demonstrate that it's specious.

Something to keep in mind while we all listen to our newly found believers in individual rights and limited government on the right.

Link.

Also. (I disagree with this guy on many subjects, yet he remains a blogger that I respect.)

Also, for the record- I am no more or less annoyed by security theater today than I was 9 years ago when ridiculous, ineffective measures became the new normal. The new scanners and patdowns are dumb. They are not material for a revolution. They would not keep me from flying, just like the fact that I have to take off my shoes due to magical thinking (OMG ALL SHOES ARE NOW BOMBS) has kept me from flying. They also do not keep us safe.

There are measures which would keep us safe, but they're expensive for the wrong people so they aren't gonna happen. Right now this guy is the only person whose opinion on airport security I respect.

dg....did you get that I completely agree with you on every point? I was trying to take the argument toward more extreme conclusions to demonstrate that it's specious.
Yes, I did. Sorry if that wasn't clear - my bad.

I don't really know why I'm worked up about this, given that the odds of me having to be subjected to these requirements approaches nil. I guess, apart from the fact that Australia has an alarming tendency to copy what the US does in general, I'm quite pissed off at fellow human beings (particularly those that I know and admire) being subjected to these abuses of basic human rights.

And then there's this very stupid and boring reality - that as horrific, sudden, and terrifying as air crashes and bombings are - proportionally, they are small numbers compared to the numbers of us who will predictably die in other preventable deaths in very pedestrian ways. We don't wig out about car accidents, falls, firearms mishaps, drownings...even though accidental deaths in any single year exceed by 400timesthe deaths on even 9/11.

So why do we obsess and enact these dramas over airlines alone? If we took a totally utilitarian approach, and if we applied the same amount of effort and money, don't you think we could achieve a net reducation in accidental deaths even if we left airline security where it was 5 years ago and concentrated these very expensive efforts elsewhere?

What we're doing is not about preventing accidental death. It might be about preventing travel anxiety and its inhibitions on the economy; it might be about a narrative of a strong national defence; but it's not about preventing deaths.

Yeah, it's pretty much the same thing as the hysteria over shark attacks, despite the fact that almost twice as many people die as a result of bee stings or being struck by lightning here as shark attacks. You are just under 3,000 times more likely to die as a result of a motor vehicle accident than a shark attack, but we don't spend 3,000 times as much trying to prevent car accidents as we do killing sharks to avoid attacks.

As you say, this is all about emotional security rather than actual security and it seems that the emotional cost now exceeds the level of security that the 'protection' measures provide. The challenge for governments is that the most effective form of security (intelligence) is invisible and people don't like paying taxes for things they can't see. It's a little like the conundrum the people charged with making sure the world didn't end due to the Y2K issue faced - by being successful in their task, the problem was widely seen as a furphy but, if they had failed, they would have been blamed for The End Of Civilisation As We Know It. Lose-lose. The real problem is that the decision-makers are political animals and make decisions that will get them re-elected rather than decisions based on logic and facts.

Also (and then I'll shut up), because there have not been any successful attacks for however long, those same decision-makers use that as absolute proof that the security measures work.