We’re flying to Korea this weekend, and I have more than the usual amount of travel anxiety. It’s not because of the flight, or because I’ll be spending a week in a foreign country — it’s airport security that I dread. We’re hearing about 3 hour plus wait times to get through the pointless, stupid inspections, and our flight is at a terrible time, 9:30 in the morning. Subtract 3 hours from that. Subtract another hour or two because of Old Man syndrome. Then realize that if we don’t get on the plane in time, we lose lots of money that we can’t afford, perhaps suffer the stress of a chain of missed flights, and worst of all, risk missing the wedding we’re flying to.
This article about the futility of TSA isn’t helping, either. We’ve known for years that the security measures at airports are pure theater, that they’re inefficient and wasteful, and that they simply don’t work. So why do we keep doing something that makes the problems worse?
We all know why: fear. All it takes is one incident to set bureaucrats to scrambling to find something they can do to pretend that they’re reducing the threat. Take off your shoes! 3-1-1! Next thing you know, it’ll be patriotic loyalty oaths before boarding, or something ridiculously arbitrary. No zippered clothing allowed! Shave yourself bald before coming to the airport! Dance, monkey, dance!
Also, watch this.
“…it’ll be patriotic loyalty oaths before boarding, or something ridiculously arbitrary”
If Trump is elected, I don’t think this is far-fetched at all. However, it won’t start as a “loyalty oath”. TSA screening will be supplemented with a simple litmus test: “I am not a Muslim. I do not worship Allah. I reject the teachings of the Koran. Mohammad was not a prophet.” Muslims will just need to find other means of travel. The policy will be justified by the fact that it’s a temporary measure, “just until we have this whole thing sorted out.”.
My first trip to the US as a non-American is coming up next month. I’m very curious to see how different the whole process will be (other than having to fill in an ESTA and go through a different line at the airport).
You realize, of course, you will be stripped naked, heavily sedated, shackled to the ceiling and the floor with three guards observing your every move and six guards guarding them, while paramedical staff will regularly poke your every orifice just in case you willed some terrorism-friendly implement into existence. After deplaning, any and all devices able to record information of any type will be confiscated, just in case you would somehow have been able to record anything through psychokinesis. They will, of course be returned to you in 9 months (barring unforeseeable delays) after thorough inspection and payment of 3,751.69 dollars for this essential service. You will also be required to sign and uphold a confidentiality agreement barring you from even mentioning that you had to comply to some “security measures”. Non-compliance will lead to immediate arrest and detention without possibility for appeal and/or parole in a maximum-security North-Korean prison where you will have to thank the Great Leader until you die, unless you will be allowed to sit out your sentence at Guantanamo, where you will have to praise the Lord your God every minute of the day and the night and glue Bibles together for all eternity or until you die, whichever comes first.
In short, swimming there might be the better option. Just don’t get caught.
As someone said: “the luggage is handled like passengers, and the passengers are treated like luggage”
One problem is perverse incentives from the airlines. They charge for checked luggage (instead of charging for carry on) so that everyone brings gigantic luggables. They ought to have a line for people who plan to board carrying a book, magazine, or smart phone – and a line for everyone else. And let the people who are travelling light board first. Rather than emphasizing fast boarding, the airlines are emphasizing “brand loyalty” (which means we just hate them all)
If you’re flying this weekend, it’s probably too late to get TSA Precheck. You pay $85, go through the hassle of getting fingerprinted and you can skip the long lines for 5 years. I fly often and have no choice. It really makes a huge difference since I can keep my laptop and shoes and I’m just basically waved through. But of course the whole thing sucks. It’s a form of extortion (pay or else…), and it is totally discriminatory since not everybody can afford to pay this extra fee. So American: A capitalistic solution to a problem caused by authoritarianism.
I was part of a wonderful piece of security theater last month while flying home from Dublin, through Toronto, then flying to a different destination in Canada, where I would retrieve my car and drive across the border to my destination in the States. I had purchased a bottle of single-malt Irish duty-free and they had wrapped it up and taped it into a clear plastic, clearly labeled “Duty Free” bag. When I got to Toronto, I had to exit the international terminal at customs and re-enter, without actually going outside a secured area, through, and no one could figure out why, a domestic terminal security line to catch my next flight. The guards took my bottle tightly sealed into it’s labeled “Duty Free” bag, slit it open not very neatly with a scissors, and put the bottle on some kind of scanner to determine if the contents were still merely alcohol, as of course it still was. They then put it back into the same plastic bag and re-sealed it with copious amounts of tape that had “Canadian customs” imprinted on it. I chatted with the guard while he was doing this and asked why he had to do that. He said that they had given him this very expensive piece of scanning equipment and it had to be used. “Ah, security theater,” I said. He laughed and agreed with me. Fortunately, the guard at the American border only asked what I had to declare, which was one bottle of alcohol after being out of the country for 13 days. He was totally disinterested and never asked to see it or show any receipts or boarding passes or anything. I’ve been grilled harder coming back when I’ve only met friends for dinner in Canada.
PZ – you travel enough! Get yourself into the Pre-check program! Worth every penny they charge for it.
Some of the airports I’ve been to have started to just go back to pre-9/11 security. Hopefully that trend continues.
After the shoe bomber we had to remove our shoes.
Just thank whatever you thank that they didn’t take similar measures after the underwear bomber!!
(I flew to the UK from DFW just last week and the TSAssholes had three lines for pre-approved, priority and the rest of us but only two check-in-ers!
As it says in the C15th poem Flen flyys: ‘gxddbov’!!!)
Oh, jeez, the “brand loyalty”. I utterly hate the litany of “medallion”, “silver medallion”, “gold medallion”, “platinum medallion”, “diamond medallion” etc. members, who get special perks, like who gets to fucking board first, and which line they get to stand in. It is petty and stupid and wasteful, and is nothing but an additional revenue stream for the airlines from people who care about pointless perks.
If the Teabaggers really wanted “small government” (they don’t), the should start with eliminating the TSA and their bloated budget. September 10th security + secure cockpit doors + today’s passengers* = safe enough.
I always go for the grope-down. It takes a little longer, but reasons:
• The RAP(e)-i-scan® xray body scanners don’t work,
• I have no confidence they are regularly inspected and calibrated (don’t think I’ve seen any blueshirts wearing dosemeters, ever). We know low-dose ionizing radiation is cumulative, so how much radiation do the body scanners emit?
• I’m paying for it, might as well get my money’s worth
* Not the dumbasses who see brown people and scream “duh terrist!”
The security theater has bad side effects too.
1) post 9/11, nobody can enter the cockpit. Consequence : Germanwings crash. A suicidal copilot, an unbreakable door and 150 dead peoples (hopefully the pilot was not Muslim)
2) idea for a terrorist : put a bomb in you bag, wait still you are in the middle of the waiting line, explode. Basically what happened in Bruxelles earlier this year.
usernames@10: The fact that Rapiscan is actually *pronounced* rapey-scan kind of gives the entire game away.
euclide@11: Unbreakable doors are a tradeoff. It’s not clear to me there are more suicidal pilots than would-be hijackers trying to break into the door.
As for attacking waiting lines, that’s old news. Wikipedia of course has a list, here’s some examples of attacking the unsecured areas of airports:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esenboğa_International_Airport_attack (1982)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orly_Airport_attack (1983)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Rome_and_Vienna_airport_attacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Los_Angeles_International_Airport_shooting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Madrid–Barajas_Airport_bombing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Glasgow_International_Airport_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Los_Angeles_International_Airport_shooting
Heinlein, baby.
(Warning, if you happen to want to go to a Disney park this summer, they have bag “searches” and metal detectors now. Takes about an extra 30-45 minutes to get to the entry gates in the morning. Argle Blargle!)
@12
They’ve had bag searches for like a decade now, but yeah, the metal detectors are new. Not everyone has to go through the latter, though.
What’s really beyond the pale with all the “medallion” BS is that these are assigned by airlines (which are private corporations), but are honored by airports (which are supposed to be public accommodations) and this happens internationally. When I arrive at European airports, “medallion” holders go through expedited lines to move through arrival and customs. I’ve traveled though the UK, France and Germany and it’s the same thing. Think about it: Governments offer special accommodations to the rich executives who paid Delta for the privilege because they’re more special than anyone else.
Know what’s fun? Standing in a security line on the way back from a national oncology conference with another attendee and loudly discussing the dangers of standing next to an open radiation source all day and designing an imaginary epidemiologic study to examine the risks and then smiling sweetly at the TSA people. Not that I’m advocating doing this, but I do wonder if TSA has a dedicated medical insurance provider and whether they would be willing to release anonymized data…
@11: The Germanwings pilot wasn’t Muslim or of Middle Eastern, African, or Asian ancestry so mental illness was the designated scapegoat for that one in the end.
Everything you’ve heard about TSA insanity is true. I flew from Phoenix Sky Harbor to San Jose this last Sunday. I arrived at PHX 2 hours and 15 minutes before my takeoff time, and I needed every one of those minutes to catch my flight that lasted 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Seems I got into moderation for too many links. To euclide@11: wikipedia has a list of attacks on airports. The earliest attack I see on people waiting to check in is from 1982.
dianne wrote:
There seem to have been genuine reasons for that diagnosis, but it remains a bit suspicious that so many people charged with hideous deeds are considered “mentally ill” while people who clearly are infected by religion are merely called terrorists who are doing their thing “in the name of religion”.
We were in New Orleans on 9/11, scheduled to fly back to Seattle on 9/13. When we got to the airport, nothing was moving, and the (FBI? — the gumint, anyway) had confiscated ALL knives, even the fast-food plastic ones, so when we bought a bagel and a blob of cream cheese we had to spread it with a spoon. (By some miracle, we managed to squeeze onto a flight on 9/15.) It’s been getting ever more ridiculous ever since.
Today, if I can’t get there by car or on a cruise ship (their “security measures” have gotten pretty ridiculous, but not nearly as onerous as TSA’s), I simply don’t go.
I’ll just leave this here:
Last Friday I hurriedly flew to Portland, Oregon to collect my son and get him back home. Naturally I went through TSA and other than the tedious business of long lines and undressing in public, there were no hitches. A few days later I went into the Clark County, WA court house with my bag which they screened at the entrance. They immediately saw in their machine a small pen knife and a small multi-tool I had forgotten about, which I was not allowed to bring them in. I realize that TSA and Clark County Court may use different criteria, but it is notable that TSA let me on an airplane with items that Clark County said I couldn’t have.
@13: True, but the metal detectors + the bag searches make the wait at least 4x as long… While laughably creating a densely packed crowd of at least 1000 people trapped within barriers *just outside* the security hut. *eyeroll*
I was able to just laugh at the bag search (never searching strollers? Really?), but now I’m just disgusted.
The best security is invisible security.
Adam Ruins Everything is a fantastic show.
We sorely need more programming like it to promote critical thinking in fun and entertaining ways.
The last time I flew it was just for a weekend break, so I had everything packed into a bag small enough to take as carry-on luggage. While standing in the queue at the airport I realised that I’d packed my grooming kit (not as fancy as it sounds: just three implements in a little leather wallet, which I’d bought from a jumble sale for a few pennies when I was 8 years old) and they probably wouldn’t take kindly to me carrying nail scissors on board. I asked one of my friends (who had brought a suitcase) if she’d take it, and she kindly did. Her suitcase was checked in without any problem, but when I was searched in the security lane they found a nailfile in my bag, which had dropped out of the little leather wallet without me realising. The bastards confiscated it.
Apparently a 6cm length of cheap, blunt steel is all it takes to bring down a mighty Airbus.
Have we? I recall posting in places like this years ago, about how the TSA, roadside sobriety checkpoints, and other security theatre should be declared unconstitutional. Very rarely did I get agreement. Mostly I got pushback from fans of the police state that such measures are necessary for our safety.
This is the part where “I told you so”.
I’ve only had positive experiences with the TSA. They even helped me find a
piece of lost luggage.
I don’t see the problem with a few extra minutes in a line at the airport.
The racial profiling should be abolished, however.
Actually, it’s not. Linear No-Threshold is a model that should never have been adopted. It’s bullshit.
Err, hit send too early.
To Usernames! (╯°□°)╯︵ ʎuʎbosıɯ
Low dose and low dose rate radiation is harmless. There is a threshold.
Also, your link doesn’t actually say that cumulative lose dose is dangerous. It just attempts to quantity the cumulative dose of some people in the population.
PS: The dose of some medical imaging equipment may be above the safe limit, whatever that safe limit is. However, the general thesis of “no safe dose threshold” is wrong.
This kind of security theater is everywhere. We went to see the Cirque du Soleil meets Avatar show at the US Bank Arena in Cincinnati last Sunday. After having my camera bag prodded and going through the metal detector I was approached by an old dude with a bug up his butt about the pocket knife that I keep on my key ring. He sadi I could return to my car (a mile away) or I could trow it away. Fuck you old dude this is a Victorinox Swiss Army knife. It cost $40 and I special ordered it for the slim model that would comfortably fit on my key chain. My Dad taught me to always have a simple tool on hand. I walked it back of course, barely getting back before the show started. I was livid, wtf did they think I was gonna do, Shiv a performer?
sounds like my experience trying to visit the starting site of the Boston Marathon, as my niece was one of the runners. I keep this little Swiss Army Knife in my pocket and didn’t even think it would be an issue for this outside event. To get to the site, everyone had to ride a sanctioned shuttle bus, (all the roads were closed to private vehicles) and the entrance to the buses had the metal detector and purses and trinket inspection station. Seeing the pocket knife, I too was told to either leave, or toss it in the trash. I tossed it to get on the bus. On returning home, found the souvenir Swiss army knife I recently purchased during a road trip.
Funny that happened after going through similar hassles about the little knife. Like visiting World Trade One Observatory, and the USS Intrepid (in NYC). Most provide retrieval tickets for the authorities to hold the item securely.
The first time this happened, I was about to board a domestic flight. TSA told me the knife could only be packed in luggage, not the carry on. As I had no luggage, only a carry-on, I asked if I could leave it in a rent-able locker most airports are famous for. He told me all the lockers are in the secured section of the airport, the section after the TSA check-in. Thinking myself super clever (at the time), I decided I could just mail the knife to my destination, then for the return flight, mail it home.
Still wonder how big a risk it is that someone would plant a bomb in an airport locker box, so they need to only let checked people have access. Yeah, it’s possible, but how big a bomb could really be planted? Seems like it would be lucrative service to provide these rent-able lockers for people to stash the items they mistakenly brought but were disallowed. Could even keep them small, like P.O. Boxes, to prevent risk of massive explosive capability.
They could offer a courier service, a securely locked satchel where the key to open it is only at the exit door of every airport (for a small fee, of course). The logistics of that are probably thwarting.
[but I like to speculate. sorry for rambling]
slithey tove:
Big enough to kill 11 people and seriously injure 74: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_LaGuardia_Airport_bombing
EnlightenmentLiberal #26,
Could you clarify what you mean by “places like this” or give an example? Perhaps there are places where people commonly state that these tactics are needed, but my memory is quite different when it comes to Pharyngula, especially when security theatre has been brought up. Any thread I can remember was largely critical of these useless measures. I just did a quick search and found this article from 2012: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/03/28/who-else-hates-the-transportation-security-administration/
and the comments appear to be overwhelmingly against it, and know full well how ridiculous it is. There was almost no support aside from a handful of people. I looked at a few of other results that popped up and they were also very critical. Maybe there were posts here on roadside sobriety checkpoints, I do not remember and my search came up empty handed.
But when it comes to the topic of this thread, the TSA, I don’t see very many people defending it.
Can somebody publish some sort of guide as to when we’re permitted to let fear lead us into bad choices, and when we’re not? Apparently we’re supposed to not let terrorists drive our decisions, but we’re supposed to vote for a presidential candidate we don’t like out of fear of the other party, and that’s okay. I really, really need a scorecard.
To The Vicar
It might be a fake quote, but it’s a good quote:
If you want to be on the right side of history, you must reject the classic modern liberal notion that the government can do no harm, and/or that proper oversight can solve any abuse of power problem. I know that’s hard to buy. I know you probably won’t. Still. Think on it.
And remember, this is coming from me, an avowed radical Marxist who wants government progressive income taxes, inheritance taxes, and property taxes, at or above 90% for the filthy rich, for the expressed purpose of wealth redistribution as a means to reduce the (political) power of the rich in favor of the proletariat (and also for basic human decency for public works programs like public single-payer health care).
Consider that Trump is following in the footsteps of Hitler and the Nazi party. They started with rhetoric for deportation, just like Trump. I am genuinely afraid that in the near future, we might see a return of concentration camps. We haven’t had those in the US for over 70 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans
Our criminal justice system is almost completely broken, and it needs a complete overhaul. Most people do not know just how completely broken that it is. Whole towns that are virtual slave plantations, see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-robinson/the-shocking-finding-from-the-doj-ferguson_b_6858388.html
These many towns and cities are funded in large part by strongly regressive taxation in the form of ticket fees, court fees, probation fees, mandated drug testing fees, etc. Slave labor via private prisons. 95% or something of all criminal cases end by the government prosecutor extorting the defendent to take a plea bargain under threat of grossly exaggerated charges. Massive racial impact disparities and outright racial discrimination. We’re living in the middle of the new prohibition, the prohibition not of alcohol but of other drugs like marijuana, cocaine, LSD, etc., and this prohibtion is responsible for greatly inflated violent and non-violent crime rates, and huge prison populations that surpass that of any other country (per capita).
So, as a guideline, follow the principle of the federal fourth amendment, which IMAO is the general rule that there should be no search seizure (including detentions, arrests, checkpoints, etc.) of a person, nor their papers, effects, or property, on the basis of suspected criminal activity, except based on probable cause specific to the person and the situation that criminal activity has happened. (Forfeiture is the subject of a whole other rant.)
Today, cops in full armor and gear, facemasks, with guns drawn, with absolutely no warning, at any hour of the day, can break down your door, and throw a grenade (a flash bang grenade) into your house, have it land in your baby’s crib, horriblying burning your baby, and the police can get off entirely without responsibility, and you and your baby will get absolutely no justice, and no monetary assistance.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/us/georgia-toddler-stun-grenade-no-indictment/
Just as one more example, in half the US states, cops can approach you while you’re walking on the sidewalk, and with basically no justification, they can demand that you identify yourself and show any ID cards that you have on you. “Papers please” ~in a thick, German accent~. (No offense to any modern Germans, unless you actually were alive during the Nazi era and complicit, in which case offense is intended.) They’re known as “stop and identify” statutes. This is one of the hallmark cliches that identifies a police state. We live in a police state. It’s not like “we’re becoming a police state”. No, we are a police state.
Too many people today, including SCOTUS, view the fourth amendment as a balancing act between the right to be free from inconvenience from obnoxious searches and seizures vs the perogative of government to catch criminals. No. It is not about lessening and avoiding the mere inconvenience from searches and seizures. The point of the fourth amendment is to balance the perogative of the people to catch criminals against the need to minimize the police power of the government to prevent abuse of that power. The less police power that we give to the government while still accomplishing our goals, the better.
While I’m on a roll, let me do one more. Remember the age-old question: “Why object to the search if you have nothing to hide?”. The usual recourse is to say “I have nothing to hide, but allowing searches like this without good cause allow for power abuses”. Snowden gives a much better response: paraphrase: “We all have something to hide, whether illegal or just embarrassing, and I’d much rather not be searched”. Everyone has something to hide, and if the police or political opponent want to harass you, they can abuse that power to find that, and use that against you.
https://mic.com/articles/119602/in-one-quote-edward-snowden-summed-up-why-our-privacy-is-worth-fighting-for
Actual Snowden quote:
We all have things that we want to hide.
The TSA with its current theatrics was always a bad idea, especially because it was entirely divorced from the proper context for discussion, which is: “Exactly how much danger are we going to prevent, and how much police power are we going to give to the government to do so?”. Living in a free society and not in a police state means that we have to accept certain risks as part of our everyday life. Do not give into the false notion that creating a police state will make you safer, because as a general rule: it won’t. Don’t forget about the evil that people can do in positions of government power.
Again, I am not saying that smaller government is better. We can still have lots of great public works, like wealth redistribution by progressive taxation, public single-payer health care, etc., while also working towards minimizing police powers. Those are not contradictory goals.
And if you still think that I’m a right wing, militia, anarchist, loon, then fuck it. I have nothing more to say. History repeats itself, and those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
/rant
PS: I dropped this from my draft while editting. My bad. It’s one of the most important parts.
If you still think that our country is not all sorts of fucked up, you need to read Chomsky.
you know I wonder how the advocates for the TSA reconcile their restrictions and searches for air travel with the promotion of concealed carry laws which are often advocated / defended by the same people.
uncle frogy
@38: Good question. Wouldn’t we all be safer if good guys with bombs on planes could stop bad guys with bombs on planes rather than disarming everyone and having only the lawbreakers have bombs on planes?
While we’re at it, wouldn’t we be safer if every country had nukes because then the good guys with nukes could stop the bad guys with nukes. Quick, someone loan one to Iran while they’re getting their program back together. (Actually, isn’t this pretty close to Trump’s position?)
Ah, but Brussels’ Airport security have found The solution! Now peole have to wait in lines Outside the Airport to be checked by security in order to have the right to join the lines of waiting inside the airport where they’ll be checked by security a second time in order to have the right to join the boarding lines where they’ll be checked by security a third time during which they’ll see their plane taking off without them.
I am not making that shit up.
***
And then you get people in my hometown of Nice suddenly freaking out when they realized that Princes from Qatar and the UAE enjoyed expedited control privileges from years.
For a very long time, they didn’t give a shit, but now that they know that some of the rich fuckers for whom the system was deliberately rigged are Arabs, they’re outraged.
***
Because I don’t want a crooked cop planting drugs on my cupboards or kiddy porn on my computer in order to have me sentenced after a rigged trial.
***
And I have a personal version: Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety may well deserve neither liberty nor safety, but I do and I have no way to effectively preserve my freedoms without also preserving theirs.
@35:
“Bad choices” is begging the question here. There are reasonable and proportionate responses to legitimate fears, unreasonable or disproportionate responses to legitimate fears, and illegitimate fears. The first group are not “bad choices”. Which group “vot[ing] for a presidential candidate we don’t like out of fear of the other party” falls into is a matter on which reasonable people can disagree. (Also, which group “let[ting] terrorists drive our decisions” falls into rather depends on the nature of the decisions in question. There are some reasonable and proportionate security measures that can be implemented in response to terrorism. Exactly what those are depends on the circumstances.)
The TSA is never going to be disbanded, for the simple reason that no president will preside over the tens of thousands of job losses it would incur. Some of those could be diverted to more productive security measures, but I’d imagine it’s not a large number.
So, a hypothetical friend of mine (who was a hypothetical EOD tech) was coming back from doing a range clearance in Nevada (where a bunch of EOD techs loaded down with C4, time fuse, and blasting caps wander across a bombing range blowing up everything that didn’t blow up on its own). This hypothetical friend, being a very heavy packer, had shoved one of his uniforms into his carry on, which he took through Airport security in Las Vegas, transferred in Baltimore, had a six hour layover in London, then flew into Frankfurt Germany. After getting home, he threw his civilian clothes and that one uniform into the wash. When he went to get them out of the wash he noticed that, sitting on the bottom of the drum, there was a third of a block of C4 just chilling, probably missed in one of the several pockets he’d crammed C4 into on a range walk. Now, C4 on its own is very stable, and it more likely to give you dermatitis than blow you up, but the fact remains that (hypothetically) this explosive, which was big enough to cause serious damage if it were a mass murderer rather than an absentminded hypothetical EOD tech who got it on board, made it through security screening in the US, traveled through 4 airports in three countries and on three planes, and nobody at any stage noticed…hypothetically. *coughs sheepishly*
I always heard it said “Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither and will lose both.”
@matrim: I’d speculate that the hypothetical friend does not fit the “profile” and was subject to “anti-profiling” at the airport. Hypothetically.
Matrim, dianne:
We know from the 95% failure rate of testing exercises that the TSA (and indeed airport security all over the world) regularly fail to find simulated explosives (not to mention guns and other prohibited items). We also know from the various attempted attacks that they can’t find real explosives. Furthermore, I can’t recall ever hearing of airport security screening finding any actual explosives – and I’m pretty sure that it’s the sort of thing they’d shout about if it happened. I therefore conclude that airport security screening is completely ineffectual.
It’s not the result of anti-profiling, they’re just spectacularly incompetent.
@46
I, being a non-hypothetical EOD tech, did occasionally get popped by explosive sniffers at airports, but their testing process always came up with wrong results. For example, after doing range work where I was working heavily with C4 (which is mostly RDX), PETN, TNT, Comp-B, and smokeless powder I got popped for TATP. One time I got popped for HMX, which at least makes sense as it’s chemically similar to RDX, but another time I got tagged for ANFO…no idea where they got that.
Vote Trump/Harris! Then it’ll happen only if you’re brown.
I know people who would pay good money for this…
Flying to Montana this July, taking my son on our second annual dino-dig. Also the first time flying with a new metallic hip. This should be interesting.
That too. Good point.