I have to agree, the TSA has become nothing more than a political tool that does little to prevent future terrorist attacks. I believe they serve a purpose, but that purpose is not to prevent organized terrorist attacks, it is to keep a single crazy guy from bringing a gun or knife on board and attacking people, or hijacking the plane and holding the passengers for ransom. (Keep in mind that this is what hijackings were before 9-11, which is why they were able to crash three planes)
Nowadays they have become more of a "feel-good" terrorist defense. Passengers and pilots are screened for everything and have their bottles of water and toenail clippers taken in the "search for bombs" while cleaning crew and other employees are not screened at all. The TSA does not, and cannot effectively, defend against terrorist attacks. That falls to the FBI and CIA, if an individual intending to attack America makes it to the airport than we have already failed and if the TSA stops them it is nothing but dumb luck. Yet Americans accept all of these intrusions and expenses for a false sense of safety. The T-Shirt vendor had it right "See Something, Say Something" is the single most effective last line of defense.
It's a tricky issue. The TSA does seem overdone. However, if terrorists are allowed to pull off the same stunts over and over, then the US will look very foolish and ineffective at protecting its people. So, I don't blame the US for being cautious.
It is the terrorist's goal to make people afraid of flying and distrustful of the US government -- so in a way, making the TSA visible (their visibility being a "feel-good" defense) is in fact counter-terrorism. People do seem to trust them (and hence the US government) with their security.
Very true and I think that applies in a wide variety of cases too. To me its telling that the recession of 1938 came shortly after FDR came out with a new plan to help "fix" the economy.
For me, the terrorists have now won: I won't fly to most places any more.
I won't fly because the security theatre now makes it so unpleasant, time-consuming and indirectly expensive that I would rather forego my holiday to those destinations I can't reach by other modes of transport that actually make me feel comfortable on the journey and welcome when I arrive.
That's a shame, because I would have really liked to visit places like the US and Japan some time in my life (I live in the UK). But how am I supposed to enjoy a holiday when my journey starts with my other half and me being virtual-strip-searched by sometimes dubious characters we can't even see and ends with having biometric scans taken to go into a database as if I were a criminal?
>But how am I supposed to enjoy a holiday when my journey starts with my other half and me being virtual-strip-searched by sometimes dubious characters we can't even see and ends with having biometric scans taken to go into a database as if I were a criminal?
Is that the part where I have to take off half my clothes for real so they can put the belt and jacket outside the metal detector and the shoes through whatever that other machines does, the bit where they throw away the bottle of soda I was enjoying and make me buy a new one, the bit where someone glares at me over the top of my passport while heavily armed guards look on, the bit where the staff on the way onto the plane mess several passengers around because they don't like their tone and have a "zero tolerance" policy, the bit at the other end where I queue up for ages only to again have someone glare at me over the top of my passport in the presence of armed guards, or something else?
This is the conversational equivalent of "your feelings on the matter are irrelevant; suck it up, because I don't think it's so bad". Your opinion is duly noted.
For what it's worth, I haven't flown in over a year and a half, and have no intention of doing so until airport security returns to some semblance of sanity. I'm not being a "drama queen" about it; I simply won't pay an exorbitant rate for the privilege of being treated as a criminal because I'd like to board an airplane.
Now, change your destination to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada). Or even Toronto or Vancouver. The price goes up very quickly, for a trip no longer than any many domestic flights.
(My apologies, I should have specified continental "international" flights, as that's typically all I've ended up flying in the past, with the occasional exceptions for vacations.)
> I'm not being a "drama queen" about it; I simply won't pay an exorbitant rate for the privilege of being treated as a criminal because I'd like to board an airplane.
So, you don't think your second clause there has event a hint of hyperbole?
Not at all. The last few times I've flown (US to Canada and back again), I walked away from the experience feeling abused by the U.S. side of the transaction. You can choose to accept that or not, and can certainly write off my opinion as hyperbole if you'd like; that's your prerogative. But I don't believe I'm the only one who feels that way.
(If the "exorbitant rate" portion is what you object to, see my reply elsewhere in the thread.)
In the past year alone, several of my friends have been literally strip searched (not just the virtual one) for no apparent reason. Sure, some people don't care about being seen naked, but a lot of people do and this is a deeply embarrassing and unpleasant experience that will stay with them for a long time.
Members of my family have been left stranded in a foreign country when an airline refused to carry them because one of them asked why he was required to show the same documents for the third time in rapid succession. (The airline's excuse for this absurdly disproportionate response changed so many times afterwards it was hard to keep track, and I won't say any more because as far as I'm aware legal action for compensation is still pending.)
Hundreds of people from my country have recently been held in hotels under armed guard because after a diversion to a different country's airport due to the ash problems, they obviously didn't have visas, so they couldn't even get a train home. I'm not sure why anyone in a country these people never wanted or expected to visit would consider them such a security threat that they couldn't leave and had to be held at gunpoint, but there you go.
These things are not trivial, and I don't think a single one of those people would consider objecting to this sort of security theatre "being silly".
And you fail on the "bit in the middle", because all the unpleasantness that I described in those earlier posts happens on a single flight.
>And you fail on the "bit in the middle", because all the unpleasantness that I described in those earlier posts happens on a single flight.
You were talking about the start and the end of the journey in your OP. I assumed the "end" part referred to the return flight. Hence the holiday would be "the bit in the middle".
I'm know that people have bad experiences sometimes, but you're making an absurdly huge drama out of it. Refusing to fly is simply not a reasonable response to the typical level of inconvenience.
>Hundreds of people from my country have recently been held in hotels under armed guard
This has nothing to do with airport security, but rather immigration policy. You're going off on so many tangents here I'm not really sure what to say.
> I'm know that people have bad experiences sometimes, but you're making an absurdly huge drama out of it.
The point is that almost everyone I know seems to be having a bad experience with flying these days, and almost all of it is directly due to the over-zealous security and related issues. Why should we "come quietly" and accept our quality of life being reduced in this way?
> Refusing to fly is simply not a reasonable response to the typical level of inconvenience.
I, and an increasing number of my friends and family, disagree with you. Fortunately, where and how we travel still remains our choice, so those modes of transport and destinations that offer a pleasant, efficient experience will benefit, while those that do not will suffer.
The point is that almost everyone I know seems to be having a bad experience with flying these days
Just as a counterpoint, almost everyone I know is minorly inconvenienced and continues on their merry way way when flying. Mainly grumbling about having to repack their carry-on and security theater jokes. And these are people flying into/out of major airports (SFO, LAX, JFK, ORD to name a few).
// edit: Include me in this as well. And I've flown into or out of ROC, JFK and SFO ~8-10x a year (4-5 trips a year) for the past 3 years.
Of course, this just illustrates anecdotes and that people view things differently. Shocking, I know.
Hundreds of people from my country
Out of curiosity, just what country are you from? Or your family? You haven't said. At least, not that I've noticed.
You don't necessarily have to have citizenship of a country to live there. Nor do you have to live in the same country that the rest of your family lives in.
I'm just wondering how much (if any) of his/friends/families experience is due to something unfortunate (such as racial profiling) vs how much (again, if any) is simply being blown out of proportion.
I've met many people through the university in the city where I live, so they come from a diverse range of backgrounds. I have noticed no common racial or nationality elements in those who have mentioned having a worse time with airport security.
In the US, at least, airport security and immigration policy are both motivated by the same fears, and a large part of airport security is enforcing immigration policy.
The OP was talking about an exceptional case in which a number of people had to enter a country without visas. Not surprisingly, they weren't allowed to wonder around at their leisure. That has nothing to do with airport security -- they were not being held in the airport.
I didn't perceive that as the center of the argument, but perhaps I misinterpreted. I read it as saying that international airline travel in general is too invasive and inconvenient, with the ash-induced diversion just a worst-case example.
At any rate, my only point was that there is a connection between the motivations for border/immigration security and airport security. Addressing the deeper motivations behind the problems with both should make both improve.
Actually, there have been people who were held airside for an extended period, and weren't even allowed access to their baggage to get a change of clothes.
And we're not talking about wandering around at their leisure, we're talking about not even being allowed to get a train home. It's not as if someone is a serious risk of becoming an illegal immigrant, if they had no intention of being in the country in the first place. But there seems to be no concept of applying common sense and issuing emergency visas despite the unusual circumstances.
the bit where someone glares at me over the top of my passport while heavily armed guards look on
The experience of the Israeli authorities, is that doing this works. You have to do this 7 times to get through the airport in Israel. They can also do it quickly and efficiently.
The OP seemed to be seriously suggesting that aiport security is so bad that he wouldn't consider flying to a foreign country for a holiday.
I agree that aiport security is a bit of a farce. But hysteria of this sort doesn't contribute much to the political debate either.
I'm not sure that providing practical self-help advice ought to count as trolling, anyway. HN isn't meant to be a political forum. Strictly speaking, any political debate is OT here.
> But hysteria of this sort doesn't contribute much to the political debate either.
It's not hysteria, it's fact. I personally will not fly to many destinations now, because the unpleasantness and inefficiency mean it is not worth the effort. I have been finding out recently that several of my friends and family now share this view, so I'm certainly not an isolated case.
For comparison, I will happily travel between London and Europe via Eurostar to Paris, where the equivalent checks required about five minutes and nothing particularly onerous or unpleasant, and in fact the staff were friendly and helpful throughout.
> Well, I fly between the US and UK quite frequently, and I don't have any problems.
Are you a US citizen?
(Edit: And on the glaring over the passport thing, that is clearly not a deal-breaker in itself, though for me the arbitrary strip searching is, as is the biometric scanning to enter certain countries.)
No, I'm British, but I'm studying in the US at the moment.
FWIW, the visa makes very little difference to how you're treated. Same experience as when I've entered on a visa waiver. Customs & immigration are generally polite, often even friendly. Security is a hassle, but not an unbearable one by any stretch of the imagination.
Before I went to the US for the first time, a lot of British people did warn me about how awful US immigration officers are. But frankly I'm now inclined to put this down to the general British tendency to expect the worst :)
OTOH, I paid the one-time cost of some 3oz bottles and quart-sized plastic bags, and don't find traveling to be much of a hassle at all. The biggest hassle when traveling in the US is that there is almost never any public transportation when you arrive.
In most airports we call the public transportation "Taxis" or "Car Service". Lame, I know. If you're ever flying to NYC our best airport is Newark International. You can get from the airport to Penn Station quickly, cheaply, and relatively easily by train. From there you've got the whole NYC subway system at your disposal.
> I won't fly to most places any more. ... I would have really liked to visit places like the US and Japan some time in my life (I live in the UK).
I wonder about this.
Do many people outside the U.S. think the way you do? It appears to me that many do. And yet, we don't hear the U.S. tourism industry screaming about people staying away.
Why not? I can only conclude that people are, by and large, not staying away.
And again, why not? Possibly the decline in the U.S. dollar vs (say) the Euro in recent years has offset the above problem somewhat, so that, while tourism is less than what it would be, it is about what the industry is used to (?).
I think the answer is either that Silhouette has had a number of unusual experiences or he's overstating the case. In the last six months I have flown from the following airports:
Heathrow
Stansted
Ben Gurion
Cologne
Vienna
Edinburgh
I have had to take my belt off at all of them, and my shoes off once. The "worst" experience was in Israel where I had to go through my bag with the very polite security guards, and it took about half an hour. They were very nice about the whole situation though.
Basically it was inconvenient, but I don't feel it was a big deal and I don't feel like my humanity has been debased.
I've also travelled once on Eurostar and the security process was exactly the same.
> I think the answer is either that Silhouette has had a number of unusual experiences or he's overstating the case.
My experience, and those I am reporting from other people I know, obviously only represent a small drop in the ocean of all air travel. It's certainly possible that we have collectively been "unlucky" and others have a much better experience.
In any case, I look at this more as a matter of principle. Clearly for at least some people air travel has become very unpleasant, very inefficient, or both, as a result of all the security theatre. This is a purely negative effect on our society. It has absolutely no merit whatsoever, except for politicians who can now say they are "doing something" about "fighting terrorism".
As with much done in the name of fighting terrorism, the measures initially only catch a few people. As long as this represents only a relatively small proportion of travellers, it doesn't cause a huge public outcry and a lot of people carry on oblivious. That doesn't mean those people would be happy with the way they were treated if their number came up.
I'm happy that you have, so far, been one of the lucky ones. I wish everyone was guaranteed the same experience you have had so far. However, as a result of the inconvenience I have experienced and the much nastier things that have happened to other people I know, I am quite sure that I wouldn't like it if my number came up, so I now choose not to fly on routes where that is a significant possibility.
Perhaps those of us who object to the security theatre do shout louder than most. So far, the visitor stats for the US show a dramatic reduction in US tourism post-9/11, but over time the level has returned to what it was before or a little higher. It's impossible to say from those figures alone whether it would have been higher still except for the people deterred by the kinds of measures we've been talking about.
Then again, a recent survey that hit a lot of the tabloids over here in the UK predicted that about 90% of our people would still fly despite airport body scanners. We're still in the fear stage with that one, and of course most people haven't experienced it yet and there haven't been too many high profile stories of abuse so far. Also, some people prefer the virtual strip search to the alternative of a physical search, so given the choice they would rather take the scanner. The wording of that survey was interesting, though, as it did seem to imply that around 10% of our population would simply refuse a body scan or avoid making arrangements where they might be required to have one. It was also interesting that in other countries, a much higher proportion of the population objected, in some cases a heavy majority. Of course, for now there are still alternative flights from the UK to many destinations that don't involve using airports like Heathrow where the scanners are, so those who object can mostly just avoid the scanners and go from elsewhere. It remains to be seen what the effect would be if the scanners became compulsory at all airports.
I think there's probably an interesting overlap between security theatre and increased retail opportunity in airports. If I were a major airport retailer, I'd be lobbying hard for increased security screening - bored people forced to hang around in airports are likely to spend more.
One obvious example: the rules about liquids require me to throw away perfectly good drinks just to go through security, only to buy identical perfectly good drinks at inflated prices on the other side.
A slightly different example: IME it takes several hours to get through security and passport control and all that jazz at both ends of a journey, even flying to another country in Europe from here in the UK or back again. I am a contractor and I bill by the hour for some contracts. If I needed to go on a business trip to a client's office elsewhere in Europe, it would cost me more in lost income for the time spent going through the checks instead of working than I would pay for all the flights and accommodation for an overnight stay. (Edit: Or, for contracts where travel takes place during service hours, it costs my clients more. But someone is paying more for the downtime for checks than they are paying for the legitimate expenses for the trip.)
Final example: Yes, I very much do object to spending large quantities of taxpayers' money on measures that make those same poeple's lives less pleasant, when there is little if any evidence to show that they actually make us any safer. Indeed, things like the liquids restrictions or the virtual strip search machines are textbook examples of introducing measures under a climate of fear that would not have been viable otherwise due to popular opposition, where the benefits of those measures are doubtful at best.
there is little if any evidence to show that they actually make us any safer
I'd argue that they don't. A friend of mine was writing a paper titled How to hijack a plane with items you bought in the duty free, though he never released it. In the book Emergency, Neil Strauss mentions conceiled blades in credit cards, ceramic hair clips and other items that various people he talked to bring on to planes as "emergency weapons". I heard from a friend about someone who brought drugs through security by having them in a bag of peanuts or something, which he was eating on his way through (you probably can't always get away with conceiling items like this, but maybe..). If you really want, you can bring all kinds of prohibited items on to planes.
How about, instead of throwing away your drink, you either finish it before going through security or wait with buying the drink until you've passed through security. That's what most people do and it leads to a lot less waste. It's not like you don't know about the drink rule ahead of time.
And about the lines at security, have you tried flying to and from smaller secondary airports? Sure it might add some time to your travel time to and from the airport, but in my experience it shaves at least an hour off of check-in and security and the people there seem to be a bit more laid back than the people and the major airports.
> How about, instead of throwing away your drink, you either finish it before going through security or wait with buying the drink until you've passed through security. That's what most people do and it leads to a lot less waste.
Judging by the vast skip full of soda bottles every time I've been through airport security recently, I'm not sure it is what most poeple do. It's pretty clear that a lot of people don't understand exactly what the rules are, and just wind up with bottles of drink confiscated when they go through: you probably see this happen to several people every time you queue up to go through yourself.
> And about the lines at security, have you tried flying to and from smaller secondary airports?
All my recent flights have been between relatively small airports, but I don't fly much myself so I don't know how representative my personal experience has been. Friends who are more experienced flyers tell me that the queues at our larger airports are usually not as bad as what I've encountered, though, so I'm not sure your characterisation of smaller airports being better is an accurate one.
> Judging by the vast skip full of soda bottles every time I've been through airport security recently, I'm not sure it is what most poeple do.
There are always someone who don't know the rule, think they can finish the water before security, but then can't, forgot about a can of soda in the bag etc. etc. Sometimes I drink a bottle of water in the line, and throw the empty in the bin.
The rule is stupid, agreed, but presumably the bin is only emptied when full, so no matter how many or how few bottles actually goes in, there's always a 50% chance of seeing a bin that's more than half full, so you can't really make any conclusions based on it (other than yes, there is some waste).
By the way, I flew out of Gatwick the other day, and both check-in and security was pretty quick. Perhaps 15-20 minutes between them, and that's been the standard pretty much anywhere in Europe and the US I've flow for the past five years. (Except for low-cost airlines that will allow you to check-in online, tell you to drop your bag at the bag-drop, then don't provide a bag-drop, so you have to stand in the regular line anyway).
This is a great article. In my personal opinion they should decrease security/airplane safety inspections until flying becomes as dangerous as driving in a bus.
I really don't see any mathematical or logical reason why flying in a plane should be safer than driving in a car (but if you do I am interested in what they are). The benefit of doing this would be huge savings in the cost of flying and the cost of the TSA. Additionally there would be a huge increase in the connivence of flying.
Love the last line: "Next step in the thought experiment: after wondering what NY would look like this weekend if run by the TSA, imagining what the TSA might be like if run in the spirit of this weekend's NY."
Nowadays they have become more of a "feel-good" terrorist defense. Passengers and pilots are screened for everything and have their bottles of water and toenail clippers taken in the "search for bombs" while cleaning crew and other employees are not screened at all. The TSA does not, and cannot effectively, defend against terrorist attacks. That falls to the FBI and CIA, if an individual intending to attack America makes it to the airport than we have already failed and if the TSA stops them it is nothing but dumb luck. Yet Americans accept all of these intrusions and expenses for a false sense of safety. The T-Shirt vendor had it right "See Something, Say Something" is the single most effective last line of defense.