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March 21, 2012

[BUMPED] TSAssholes subject child in a wheelchair to airport security tests in Chicago

[Bumped for an interesting exchange in the comments.]

Despite such strict security for this toddler,
the TSA is offering background-checked travellers the chance to use special lines and keep their shoes, belt and jacket on, leave laptops and liquids in carry-on bags and avoid a full-body scan - for a price. To qualify, frequent fliers must be invited by airlines and meet an undisclosed TSA criteria. A $100 fee for a background check is required as well as a brief interview with a Customs officer. --| Mail Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at March 21, 2012 6:52 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

$100 bucks and . . . . what? I don't get my balls tickled by these would-be military school hazers?

Protection racket, anyone? Isn't this hwo third-world police forces operate?

Incidentally: at La Guardia a few months ago I observed a very old man being made to get up out of his airport-supplied wheel chair for a frisking. I couldn't believe it. Also, La Guardia is such a disorganized piss-hole that I had to change terminals to make a flight transfer, AND I had to go through security again for a transfer flight.

Posted by: Don Rodrigo at March 19, 2012 1:00 PM

PROFILING, say it everyone, it's okay, it's 99% correct and you avoid horrifying scenes like this boy getting frisked. What utter crap!

Posted by: mare at March 19, 2012 1:33 PM

I don't know, I think I could see the jihad in his little eyes...I mean, he could've broken out any minute into finger painting, crayon scribbling, lego-building, spilling juice all over the floor...this shit needs to be taken seriously!!!

Posted by: Uncle Jefe at March 19, 2012 2:05 PM

The Department of Fatherland Security did not exist a few years ago. Is it, too, now permanent and insatiable?

Posted by: Anonymous at March 19, 2012 3:25 PM

Absent some deep and lethal existential events, it is.

Posted by: vanderleun at March 19, 2012 3:35 PM

After 9/11, if had they started a minimal security check for those who passed a background check (For a reasonable fee -$100 is not too high), and tried to do some profiling (Few checks of those over 65 and under 7), and advertised that there is a large cadre of air marshals riding on airplanes (even if such is not exactly true), the long lines, the delays, and the carnal invasions (outrage is a better word) would by this time be be way down.

Every time I stand in one of those security lines at an airport (and it is fairly frequently) my thoughts go to the fact that a few barbarians (and idiot bureaucrats) have created the conditions where the bureaucrats think it necessary for passengers to be treated like diseased cattle or as if each was a Muslim terrorist.

Even more it galls me to think we are willing to allow it. If flying were not so necessary for my travel, I would gladly boycott it. In the meantime we are under the stupid and inept boot of the TSA. I'm mad as hell, and will vote for any politician that pledges to change the system.

Posted by: Jimmy J. at March 19, 2012 3:49 PM

I was aware that pregnant Muslims were being used for this type of 'work', usually against their wills, but I wasn't aware of it happening here with the postborn.

Posted by: Jewel at March 19, 2012 4:54 PM

Three year olds are notorious for punching above their weight.

Posted by: B.Moe at March 19, 2012 5:23 PM

I was in the line at the airport last week. I removed my shoes and belt just like they said I should. I was then put into the x-ray machine and and assumed the position. As my handle suggests, I am kind of round, and if I don't have a belt on and I reach for the sky, my pants will fall down. And so they did.

Not, that I care. I am nothing to look at, and between my age and my medication, the thrill is gone. Although I did hear a couple of teenage girls retching in the background.

The stormtrooper in charge of the x-ray machine got kind of upset and refused to complete the process until I pulled my pants back up. Sadly, they stayed up long enough to complete the x-ray.

I have another trip Wednesday, wish me luck.

Posted by: Fat Man at March 19, 2012 5:55 PM

Oh, it's better than that. You pay 100 dollars and undergo a huge background check -- and then you still never know whether you'll be going through the special line or the cattle call. The frequency supposedly goes down, that's all.

Posted by: Maureen at March 19, 2012 8:06 PM

...the TSA is offering background-checked travellers the chance to use special lines and keep their shoes, belt and jacket on, leave laptops and liquids in carry-on bags and avoid a full-body scan - for a price.

What could possibly go wrong?

Posted by: BJM at March 19, 2012 9:44 PM

How many U.S.-flag airliners have been successfully hijacked since 9/11? Zero. And none every will be again. No airline passenger is going to sit there and let Omar the Tentmaker fly them into the side of a building. I don't care what the terrorist has in his hands -- a box cutter, a machete, an RPG-7, a flamethrower -- that guy is going to get his ass kicked. Nobody wants to be hacked with a machete, but when it's down to a choice between dying while helplessly strapped into a seat, or dying with your hands around some terrorist asshole's throat, anybody will choose the latter.


And numbers don't matter either. After all, even a large terror team is only going to be 6 to 10 guys. On the average airliner, the Bad Guys are going to be outnumbered two to one at the very least.


American airliners are therefore terror-proof.


Therefore, we no longer need a TSA.


Therefore, the TSA should be defunded, dismantled, and deleted.

Posted by: B Lewis at March 19, 2012 11:02 PM

B Lewis - It's even simpler than that.

"We lose a building, you lose a city" - and just to prove we ain't fooling, erase Jeddah as the price for the WTC.

Posted by: Fletcher Christian at March 20, 2012 12:47 AM

I like the way you think, Mr. Christian.

Posted by: B Lewis at March 20, 2012 2:51 AM

I like the way you think too, Fletcher, and said so then.

On being attacked on 9/11, if I had been George Bush, after gathering undeniable evidence that it was al Qaeda who had attacked us, and that al Qaeda had been supported by the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, I would have announced the following:



"America, here is the evidence of who did this to us. [Lay out the evidence.] As if it weren't evident from our decades of past practice, I am announcing now to the world this policy: The peoples and countries of the world face a choice. We will be your friend, and if this is the path you choose, we will be the best friend you will ever know. Or, you can choose to not be our friend, and if so, we will leave you in peace. But if you choose to be our enemy, or, if you allow our enemies inside your borders, we will crush you completely.



"And to demonstrate that we are completely serious about this last part, we are attacking Afghanistan tomorrow at noon Afghan local time. I have ordered our Air Force to drop their smallest nuclear weapon here. [**throws a dart at a map of Afghanistan**] For anyone in this area, I suggest you get out now.



"Again, we are willing to be friends to pretty much anybody around the world. But when you decide that you are our enemy, you are choosing to take the consequences of that choice.



"Future enemies, and those who might support them should know that I am dropping this one weapon now, and that future engagements will not be so restrained."



But Bush didn't make that statement, mainly because America wouldn't have supported it. We wanted (and want) to win their hearts and minds. It was a noble idea, but it fails to recognize that for those who have made up their minds, they have already chosen, and their hearts and minds are unwinnable. The enemy wants a victory, while we are interested in negotiating a peace.



So, we decided to enter a war of anti-insurgency. This requires a long-term commitment. And in an America where our "high-speed internet" delivers us our 3-minute Short Attention Span Theater YouTubes, it is not surprising that few of us understand long-term commitments.



The easy path was this war of attrition (which, against a determined enemy, we are losing). And part of that war was the TSA.



The TSA is a completely defensive strategy. Search everybody for the things that might bring down an airliner. It is not the only way to do things, but it is the way that we have decided.



Profiling is out, because it is offensive to most of us. We don't want to judge people by the color of their skin. Frankly, it doesn't take long to decide that profiling doesn't work anyway. When you look at shades of skin on John Walker Lindh, Jose Padilla, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, if we had a system which profiled only the swarthy-Arabs, then we'd notice the holes in that system.



Moreover, we can't exclude the elderly, or the disabled, or the very young either. If you're going to adopt this defensive strategy, then you can't exclude certain segments. The elderly are capable of terror. The terrorists have used the disabled. And Benazir Bhutto was nearly assassinated by a bomb worn on a baby.



So when you look at exactly who our enemy is, what they are capable of, and then deride what it is the TSA is charged with doing, what is the alternative? I am opposed to these Do-a-$100-background-check-and-get-out-of-the-TSA-screening schemes. These plans are going to fail eventually. The idea that post-9/11 airliners are now terror-proof because the passengers will rise up and never let it happen again is folly. There is no serious national policy which says "We don't have to do anything to defend ourselves here, because our citizens will rise up spontaneously and protect the nation." America cannot rest her defenses on spontaneous uprisings.


For what it's worth, I say all this as a 24-year Captain at a major national airline. I see the TSA every day I am at work. I don't like enduring their screenings either...and I certainly don't like the Department of Homeland Security (sic)....but again, what is the alternative?

Posted by: azlibertarian at March 20, 2012 7:01 AM

And this of course would never happen to the children of the Chosen One would it?

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/travel/Obama+daughter+spends+spring+break+Mexico/6323773/story.html

"Malia Obama and her friend are guarded by 25 U.S. Secret Service agents as well as Mexican police"

Posted by: Anonymous at March 20, 2012 7:38 AM

AZlibertarian: the alternative? "Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils" Gen. J. Stark 1809

Posted by: Roger Drew Williams at March 20, 2012 12:09 PM

Fletcher Christian: You are way too easy. The price should have Mecca And Medina.

Posted by: Fat Man at March 20, 2012 12:11 PM

azlibertarian: "Folly" is letting a stranger stick his hands down your kid's pants. If it's that or risk being hijacked, bring on the hijackers. I'd rather die than let a stranger molest my kids.

Posted by: B Lewis at March 20, 2012 12:51 PM

Per alternative:
"Profiling is out, because it is offensive to most of us. We don't want to judge people by the color of their skin. Frankly, it doesn't take long to decide that profiling doesn't work anyway."

Sir, for what it's worth, I say you are a phony.
I don't believe for a minute you have anything to do with a major US Airline.

Tell El Al profiling doesn't work!

Posted by: Rocky at March 20, 2012 7:00 PM

"'Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils.'"

...and...

"'Folly' is letting a stranger stick his hands down your kid's pants. If it's that or risk being hijacked, bring on the hijackers. I'd rather die than let a stranger molest my kids."

Well, you always have a choice here. You can "live free" if you want to. You don't have to fly. You (and your children) can avoid the TSA and find another way to where you're going.

But the American traveling public, and more importantly, those of us on the ground who would be the targets for a hijacked plane, can't have things both ways: You can't have an environment inside airport security which is safe from those who would make aviation a target without participating in making it so.

I would very much like it if our enemy was a civil, decent enemy who would meet us on the battlefield dressed in uniforms and would agree to behave by certain standards of how that war would be fought. But they aren't that sort of enemy. Instead, we have an enemy who knows that because there is nothing more precious than a baby, the Jihadist father will strap a bomb onto his infant son, and use that son as a weapon (Note: While he missed his target, he succeeded in killing 170 with this attack.). Because they know that nobody likes their genitals groped, our enemies will board a plane with PETN packed around their genitals. This is who they are. I didn't make them this way. And I didn't make the US airline industry their target. Nearly fifty years ago, they picked this industry because it is emblematic of American power and reach.

Again, while I appreciate the complaints of intrusiveness against the TSA, I am genuinely interested in what the alternatives are. How do you make aviation safe from the hijackers we know will target it without subjecting everyone to the searches required to keep them out? "Bringing on the hijackers" just doesn't seem like a serious alternative.

Posted by: azlibertarian at March 21, 2012 5:47 AM

Rocky,

You can believe what you want of me, and I'll answer any question you might propose of a 767 Captain with 16,000 hours under my belt. The internet is full of charlatans, but I am exactly who I say I am.

Profiling works for El Al, but it is an incredibly expensive program.

Israel is a country which is a bit smaller (7992 sq. mi.) than New Jersey in area (8721 sq. mi.), and with a population (7.8 million) about that of Virginia (8.1 million).

There is, effectively, no intra-state commercial aviation in these states. They're too small to support it. And so it is with El Al too.

El Al has 40 airplanes. Fourty. For comparison, American has 605, Southwest (including their AirTran merger) has 701, United has 702 (including those acquired in their recent merger with Continental), and Delta has 730. El Al spends $100m per year to cover half the security costs of the flying done by those 40 planes (the Israeli government covers the other half) for their 1.3 million annual emplanements. The US aviation industry has 735 million emplanements.

Doing the math here, you see that El Al's security program costs them Ten Times more per passenger than US security does. And not for nothing, but El Al is in financial dire straits too.

The El Al-style profiling security program is one way to skin the cat. While I do not deny that it is effective, it is also very expensive, and I'm not sure those who advocate for it would be willing to pay for it.

Posted by: azlibertarian at March 21, 2012 6:32 AM


azlibertarian;

"Profiling works for El Al, but it is an incredibly expensive program."

Firstly 'security'- with minimum loss of freedom should be the paramount concern, not cost.

If airport security would be given over to private enterprise, where common sense prevailed instead of political correctness. Where profiling was the order of the day,instead of wasting resources on blue-hair grandmas,nursing moms and babies with full diapers. Where government run bureaucratic,make-work, security window dressing, would be dissolved. I have no doubt the cost real security would be greatly reduced.

-In the meantime I maintain more of my freedoms.

There is no way to compare El Al's cost of security to what it might cost here. You mention enplanements or passenger boardings, you might be aware US Airlines are by law required to share the financial burden of security, which in turn is passed along to the flying public, so, more boardings equates to more revenue to fund the security system.

-In the meantime I retain more freedom.

While you were going through a special Airline employee screening line you probably didn't notice the mother with two toddlers being asked to step aside for a second and more thorough search, while all middle eastern males breezed right through to avoid a discrimination suit.

The more second screenings the TSA performs, just as a cop writing tickets, the better they look and they know a Caucasian woman has no grounds/right to complain.

Am I judging middle eastern men by the color of his skin? Hell No ! I'm judging him because 100% of terrorist attracts against the US have been carried out by middle eastern males and they want to kill me.(Timothy McVeigh is a straw dog here)

If you have any insight into the operation of the TSA you must know it's a facade to lull the flying public into a false sense of security.

-In the meantime I forfeit my freedoms.

With little research it would be very easy to breach any measures that are now in place.
You ever notice a food catering truck parked at an aircraft service door at 4:00 am ?

Go to eBay and purchase a pilots, flight attendants, an aircraft technician's uniform and ask enough employees that are in a hurry, for the entry code of a secure door.. what are the chances?

-In the meantime I forfeit my freedoms.

While at work I suspect you keep your views on this topic to yourself.

Regards


Posted by: Rocky at March 21, 2012 11:41 AM

Well, you always have a choice here. You can "live free" if you want to. You don't have to fly. You (and your children) can avoid the TSA and find another way to where you're going.


Which is what I and my family do: when we must travel, we take the train or drive. But what happens when the TSA starts groping people at train stations in the name of security? What happens when they put roadblocks on the Interstate? By your logic, I should be forced to watch a government employee fondle my child's genitals in order to move freely about my own country. Why not just go Full Soviet and require internal passports while we're at it?


But the American traveling public, and more importantly, those of us on the ground who would be the targets for a hijacked plane, can't have things both ways: You can't have an environment inside airport security which is safe from those who would make aviation a target without participating in making it so.


THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SAFETY.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SAFETY.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SAFETY.


There can't be, outside of a totalitarian surveillance state. Freedom is inherently dangerous. I would rather risk my own life and the lives of my entire family (and yours) than be "safe" and treated like an animal.


Because they know that nobody likes their genitals groped, our enemies will board a plane with PETN packed around their genitals.


And what happens when Omar the Tentmaker packs a bomb up his rectum? Am I going to have to watch a unionized government employee sodomize my kids so that we can have this illusory "safety" to which you refer?


No. I'd rather die in a plane crash.


You want an alternative? Here's an alternative: Put all Muslims in the United States into concentration camps. If this is World War, and if (as you admit) there's no way to tell the Good Japanese from the Bad Japanese, then the only rational thing to do is lock them all up, as we did back when this was a country ruled by semi-human beings instead of ideological robots. Close their mosques, seize their property, and deport every man jack of them. Queen Isabella knew how to deal with Muslims: push them into the ocean at swordpoint.

And, yes, it's a violation of their civil rights. But guess what? I don't care. It's a violation of my civil rights to be subjected to the TSA's farcical "security" regime. And since somebody's going to have their civil rights violated no matter what, I pick them.


PS - Please let me know which airline you fly for, so I can choose another one in the unlikely event that I ever fly a U.S.-flag airline again.

Posted by: B Lewis at March 21, 2012 5:58 PM

Rocky,

I don't care what we're talking about...healthcare, energy, fashion, the newest car, whatever...cost is always a concern. It is no less a concern with security. Never has been.

You may want that your freedom is "the paramount concern", but freedom comes in many different definitions. For example, we would want our .gov to do what they can to make us free from terrorists flying airplanes into buildings we just happen to be in.

You're certainly not the only one I've heard this from, but it was you who brought up El Al's profiling in this discussion. And now that I've shown just how expensive that profiling program is, now you say that there is no way to compare the costs of their security to how a profiling program might be done here.

I agree that privatizing .gov functions would be a very good thing, and that it would lead to decreased costs for these things that we have the .gov do for us. Believe me, I agree.

However, if I was a private airline company CEO, and I had control of the security of my airline, then I would do much as we see the TSA do today. Now that I know that a Jihadist will strap a bomb onto his baby, I will not exempt a kid from screening just because the Western mind thinks that a child can never be made into a weapon. Now that I know that the elderly in the Jihadi world are capable and willing to be terrorists, I won't give the blue-haired grandma a pass on screening. Now that I know that the caucasians John Walker Lindh, and Adam Gadahn can be Jihadi terrorists, I will have to look at every caucasian. The same with the hispanic Jose Padilla, and the African Abdulmutallab.

By the way, I am very much aware of what goes on in the TSA's screening line, and have been there myself. I'll tell you right up front that the TSA does not keep a "quota" on their additional screenings. Their mission contradicts itself: They are charged with making sure that no one makes it inside airport security with a prohibited item, while also keeping the lines moving as quickly as possible. They don't make a "bounty" off of additional screenings.

If the TSA is a facade, then how did they find 1300 weapons last year? Was that a "false sense of security"?

Short of making airport security into something out of a maximum-security prison, there will always be a way to get around security. But believe it or not, the TSA and the airport authorities are aware of these shortcomings (for example, the uniforms for sale on ebay (which get pulled down the minute they're found, BTW), and the catering trucks that you mention), and have measures in place to address them.

For what it's worth, I don't "keep these views to myself" while at work. I understand that what we have now for airport security was arrived at as a consensus from all the interested parties....the TSA, the airlines, their employees, and the passengers. No one party has had things entirely their way.

Posted by: azlibertarian at March 21, 2012 6:29 PM

Posted by: Rocky at March 21, 2012 7:34 PM

It happened again today, and the TSA idiots freaked again.

Sigh.

Posted by: Fat Man at March 21, 2012 11:29 PM

Here's another interesting fact to consider while the TSA is jiggling your b*lls:

The people putting catering on the aircraft, the people cleaning the aircraft between flights, the people fueling the aircraft and the people throwing bags in/out the belly of the aircraft you are being searched prior to boarding, fill out a form, the cops check against a list and then they have free access to all of the vulnerable parts of the aircraft you fly on. I know, I was one of those people not long after the Lockerbie bombing.

Osama bin Laden could have gotten a "security badge" to work on the air side of the airport. Unless he uses his real name when completing his security badge application he will be approved. It's not more difficult to get an airport security badge than to get a driver's license, unless you are really stupid.

Guess who checks the lunch boxes or personal effects of the people entering the airport to work on the aircraft between flights? Nobody, unless some rent-a-cop takes his own initiative.

The FAA has been warned about this airport employee security loophole since before Lockerbie. Their response was to order airlines accepting cargo to "know their customer" or check the ID of whomever is shipping cargo on passenger aircraft. Terrorists could hide a half-dozen boxes the size of microwave ovens on all but the smallest of aircraft while the TSA is checking for virgins by the metal detectors.

Guess who is manning the cleaning crews and catering crews on a majority of aircraft? Anyone that will work for near minimum-wage. You are lucky to find more than 2-3 English speaking people in the crew with unsupervised access to the aircraft interior between flights.

Your shampoo bottle is a hazard to air navigation but 12 Somalis stocking magazines and running a carpet sweeper across the cabin floor, no problem.

Posted by: Scott M at March 22, 2012 2:14 AM

Rocky,

From your infowars article....
“The president of the airport said Tuesday that he would apply again to use private operators to screen passengers, using federal standards and oversight,”

So what is different here? If the airport authority in Orlando chooses to let the TSA go, and in their place hire a private security company, and that private company "uses federal standards and oversight", how will the put-upon passenger notice the difference? [For those who don't know, this is exactly how things have always been done in San Francisco.]

I'm not going to comment on the video you linked other than to say this: If one were in a position where you had access to Sensitive Security Information, revealing that information comes at a cost. This is true of the FDIC bank examiner, a .gov prosecutor, or a Federal Flight Deck Officer.

If the FFDO has problems with the way the TSA secures airports, he should use TSA channels to make these concerns known. If the TSA isn't responsive, then figure out what it takes to become a Whistleblower. But while revealing SSI information by posting something on YouTube might give the public an opportunity to say "See! I told you so!", it does not make airports more secure. When the TSA decided that they were going to revoke his FFDO status, I can't fault them at all for bringing 6 guys. He had made himself publicly known to be disgruntled, and he had a .gov gun. That the California authorities decided to revoke his CCW permit seems to be something to address to California, and not the TSA.

Posted by: azlibertarian at March 22, 2012 6:49 AM

When was the last time you visited a US Post Office and received service as a valued customer? Hello FedEx and UPS. Goodbye Post Office.

..using federal standards and oversight," So what is the different here?

The difference is- THE GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN REMOVED.
Now control of the system falls to those who know best what is needed. They are free to draft appropriate and common sense policies and procedures for their unique situation, while still complying to federal standards . They are free to hire, without gov. guidelines. Also free to fire, thus avoiding a Post Office mentality. They will also be in a position to petition the gov. to revise and modify federal standards based upon what has been proven to work.

Privatizing Airport security is only the first step that will eventually lead to the most logical solution, profiling passengers.


"Captain, do you think the US should emulate El Al's security program and profile passengers?"

"Well you know that as a Captain, my main focus is cost, and El Al's approach to security would just be too expensive. Besides, I'ed much much rather risk having my ass blown out of the sky, than offend anyone by profiling."

And Mohammed said, Good luck with that !



Posted by: Rocky at March 22, 2012 9:16 AM

Scott M.....

As you point out, the people who work at an airport go through a background check. But as anyone who has ever thought about it for a moment, you'll know that there are background checks, and then there are background checks.

A background check is essentially a security clearance. It says: We've checked out this guy thoroughly enough to reasonably believe that he will not harm us with the inside knowledge or access that we will grant him.

But as you say, this isn't an absolute guarantee. One need to look no further than Robert Hanssen to see someone who passed far more stringent background testing than any airport worker and was successful in betraying the trust given to him.

So given that airport workers don't endure the security screening that passengers do, what is the alternative? If, in the interest of airport security, we decide to run them through this screening, why not do it?

I'm not saying I agree with this, but here's why: Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport has been the busiest airport in the world since 2005. ATL has 58,000 employees. Of course, not every one of them works every day of the week, so I'd guess that on any given day, 30,000 airport employees show up to work.

If you screened them the same way passengers are, you wouldn't just have 30,000 additional people going through security, but because many of these employees pass in and out of security many times a day, it might be more. To keep the lines moving, you'd have to build and staff more screening lines (perhaps designated as "employee only"), which drives up the cost of the program (Remember: Cost is always a factor.).

And it's not just the cost of this additional employee screening that is of concern. When you put up roadblocks to how much work you can get out of your employee each day--like making him spend some of his work day taking off his shoes, emptying out his pockets, and going through a magnetometer many times a day--you are decreasing his productivity. You'd have to hire more employees to get the same work done, further driving up the cost of what you're doing. And that cost will be passed on to the customer.

Then, of course, you'd have to ask: If you can't trust the employees who can pass a background check, but instead insist that he be checked for prohibited items, who checks the checkers? Wouldn't they too be susceptible to the same sorts of Trojan Horse type intrusions that you believe the airport employees are capable of?

Here's a simple thought experiment. Have you ever seen a cop inside security? Of course you have. Have you ever seen a cop go through TSA screening? Of course not. The cop has had his background checked, and by virtue of that, he can bypass the screening that you and I go through. He has a gun, and pepper-spray, and probably a knife somewhere, and yet he is inside security. He is there because he has sufficiently convinced his employers that he will not betray the trust given to him. Is it possible for him to betray that trust? Yes--see Robert Hanssen above. But he has offered sufficient reason that he is there for good reasons and not bad.

And so it is with the airplane cleaners and the Somali's who stock the magazines in the gift shops.

As I said earlier, what we know as airport security is a consensus decision arrived at by a committee. If the TSA ran things, they would like airport security to be like checking in to a Supermax....zero luggage, strip searches, body cavity checks, the whole nine-yards. The airlines (and airport vendors) say "Hey. We've got to make a profit here, and if you make things too odious--either to our passengers or to our employees--we won't be able to do that". The passengers say, "What? I'm the good-guy here, and you want me to show up 3 hours early so I can be profiled? Why is it that I have to take my shoes off (forgetting that Richard Reid hollowed out his Nikes with a Dremel to find a space for his PETN.)?"

The solution we have is one that does not make any one party completely happy. Like everything, it is a middle ground between the interested parties.

I've got other responses in mind for B. Lewis and Rocky, but I've also got work to do today, and will try to get back to this later tonight.

Posted by: azlibertarian at March 22, 2012 11:20 AM

@azlibertarian


The TSA is a completely defensive strategy. Search everybody for the things that might bring down an airliner. It is not the only way to do things, but it is the way that we have decided.



What you we Kemsobe? I'm a frequent biz flyer and a registered voter and no one asked me.


The TSA recently missed a loaded handgun accidentally left in a Texas woman's carry-on. WTF were the TSA agents screening the x-ray station doing?



I have ZERO confidence in the TSA's ability to consistently find "things that might bring down an airliner". However they have no problem finding valuables in checked luggage.


Posted by: BJM at March 22, 2012 1:16 PM

Fat Man - I actually disagree. Jeddah was not a random choice. It is known that Saudi money was behind 9/11 and most of the perps were Saudis, so Saudi Arabia ought to have paid the penalty. Riyadh is both possibly an over-reaction and also gets rid of the people who might stop the insanity. And the two "holy" cities are too much; after all, there are some relatively sane Muslims, or so I'm told - the Chinese ones for example.

Mecca and Medina are only targets in the Three Conjectures scenario, IMHO. Of course, if civilisation gets attacked with WMDs (of any type) then the gloves are off. All the way off.

Posted by: Fletcher Christian at March 22, 2012 3:19 PM

I've got other responses in mind for B. Lewis and Rocky, but I've also got work to do today, and will try to get back to this later tonight.


Kindly do not bother. No argument you can make will ever convince me that national security demands that I let a stranger finger my kid's doodle. See ya at Camp FEMA, Captain Security.

Posted by: B Lewis at March 22, 2012 7:15 PM

B Lewis...

Sorry. You're getting my response anyway. I'm not here to convince you.

Your March 21, 2012 5:58 PM post is both hyperbolic and self-contradictory.

You complain that the TSA is but one step away from the Soviet-era "Papers, Please" oppressive control over internal transportation, and then in the next breath, advocate that we "
[p]ut all Muslims in the United States into concentration camps" [emphasis, yours]. These camps of yours would be all about about freedom, I guess.

You say that "when [you and your family] must travel, we take the train or drive", and then at the end of your post ask that I identify the airline I am employed at, so that in the unlikely event that you ever fly again, you can avoid it. If you avoid flying, why does it matter who I work for? Personally, I avoid smoke shops. I couldn't care less who works there.

Just so you know, the "bomb up his rectum" thingi has been done too. Russian "Black Widows" are thought to have used this method to bring explosives through security in airplane bombings in 2004.

Rocky....

No, Rocky, if a private airline security company has to endure "federal standards and oversight", then the government has not been removed. The .gov is still there. FWIW, a private screening company is not completely "...free to draft appropriate and common sense policies and procedures for their unique situation." While there are some airport authorities who have some unique circumstances, the fed.gov must bless their unique plans. There is no difference between the private screening done today in SFO, and the TSA screening done in our host's city of Seattle. None at all.

BJM....

I guess you missed that we live in a representative democracy, and don't directly vote on most of the matters in front of us. The only citizens who voted for or against the creation of the TSA were our congress-critters.

I've never said that TSA screening is perfect. That is the goal, but it is an impossible one. For what it's worth, the security procedures in a Supermax prison are not completely able to prevent those inside from having weapons. There are occasional events when a weapon does get through TSA screening, and when it does happen, they don't like missing these weapons at all. However, when you look at TSA screening as a function of the intrusiveness of the search, the time required, the cost, and perhaps other metrics, I think that on balance, it is a reasonable program.

Posted by: azlibertarian at March 23, 2012 5:46 AM

@ az libertarian;

Thanks Captain Dave for your insightful, albeit unusual view of the TSA.

Posted by: Rocky at March 24, 2012 8:54 AM

Captain Dave runs a very fine blog, and I very much admire his writing.

But his writings are his, and mine are mine. My "azlibertarian" nom-de-internet is not a sock-puppet for Dave.

Posted by: azlibertarian at March 25, 2012 7:31 AM



;)

Posted by: Rocky at March 25, 2012 10:16 AM

The "security check" or "background check" airport workers must pass before receiving their ID badge, an unlimited access to the secure areas of the airport, is like what the cops do when you are stopped for speeding. They check to see if the name on the user-supplied credential causes an alarm in a remote database. No alarm, you pass. So, in the unlikely event that people willing to risk their lives to kill Americans might also be willing to get a fake driver's license, they will pass the "background check."

Now, once you have the airport ID badge it's no longer a matter of keeping bottles with more than 3 ounces off of the aircraft. It's a matter of what physically can the airport worked carry on their person, with their work gear, or in their work vehicle which passes in and out of the "secure" side of airport security.

For example, during and after college I variously worked as general aviation/airline refueler, line service tech, aircraft mechanic. As a refueler I drove either a multi-thousand gallon fuel tanker truck or a converted pickup with pumps to draw fuel from underground tanks and pumps to load fuel into aircraft. To gain access to the actual aircraft I drove my truck to what was similar to a toll booth and showed my airport ID, dind't swipe, just held it up for visual inspection by the rent-a-cop. I could have carried hundreds to thousands of pounds of explosives in my truck and parked it under any aircraft, with any number of passengers, and only other refuelers or airport baggage handlers would even recognize I wasn't supposed to be there, like a waiter showing up to another waiter's table in a restaurant.

All TSA even claims today, after the Lockerbie bombing Sept 11 is that airport workers are subject to random questioning and physical pat-downs and their vehicles are subject to random inspection. In practice, the supervisors and employers of the various ground service providers, many of which are contractors to the airlines, make 99% of the security observations, which is to say Abdullah has ID that says "Abdullah". Abdullah shows up for work often enough not to get fired, has passed a drug screen to see if he smokes pot before he's hired. And nobody in Abdullah's work crew has yet reported Abdullah is carrying a bulky item under his shirt and reflective vest while loading catering carts into the galley just behind the cockpit on the 767.

So while you wait in line for security theater, starring the TSA Players, just understand the absence or presence of any unauthorized boxes in the cabin, cargo, and other places is due to a decision by the terrorists, not security procedures.

The FAA, and now TSA, have known this since long before the Lockerbie bombing. They've done almost nothing to change anything with airport workers. Now, you tell me is what you can smuggle in your suitcase, that was already x-rayed and subject to inspection prior to Sept 11, or what a minimum-wage worker can put, or allow to be put in a truck which is going to park under the aircraft with no supervision a bigger threat to security. I'll just remind you American Airline employees at Miami, Int'l were busted in the 1980s-1990s for simply putting bags of cocaine inside access doors of aircraft to smuggle cocaine. Nothing stops that from continuing or from those packages being replaced by explosives. Nothing stops that, but you are limited to tiny bottles in your luggage. Security relies on the law of large numbers and the impression that surely such a big loophole must not really exist.

The TSA would be better deployed standing watch outside/inside of the aircraft. But most of that wouldn't be as visible to passengers and since the goal is to appear to increase security the security theater is expanded.

The Trusted Traveler Program can be defeated with an off-airport kidnapping. Kidnap the family of someone with trusted traveler credentials and force them to use their access to move the terrorist payload into the cabin. Or get a terrorist sympathizer hired as an airline employee, cabin crew or ground crew.

The TSA is hassling passengers because it's the easiest thing to do and it's the most visible thing to do for all of the money being dropped on them.

Posted by: Scott M at March 31, 2012 2:23 PM

Excellent post Scott M.

You mention only a few behind the scenes possibilities that are open to the bad guys.

The imagination of terrorist attending a radical mosque is unlimited. Will probably only be a matter of time.

Posted by: Rocky at April 1, 2012 6:01 AM

Yes, Scott, it is a good post.

But a couple of points need to be mentioned.....

*A Trojan Horse attack is always a possibility. These types of attacks are a great concern today in Afghanistan. This type of attack took casualties at Ft. Hood.

But as you point out, background checks are only as good as you make them. But I will add that a background check can never absolutely guarantee that a traitor won't be in your midst. As I mentioned earlier, Robert Hanssen rose to a high level in the FBI, had high-level security clearances, and still was a traitor. A deep background check on every fuel-truck driver and airplane cabin cleaner will still not guarantee that you won't be attacked.

* The airlines are in business to make a profit here. They are in the business of moving people from Point A to Point B. Many of the airlines' passengers are themselves traveling for the purposes of their businesses.

When, in the interest of improving security (which is necessary), you increase the airlines' security costs, and decrease the productivity of their employees, these costs will be passed on to the customer.

In short, security has a cost associated with it.

We will all draw different conclusions here, but I hope we can agree that some of those costs are reasonable, and some of them are not.

Posted by: azlibertarian at April 1, 2012 8:51 AM

I haven’t done a lot of research about this site but it seems you are on the right track. My chucrh does background checks on every one working with children or youth. We always have two or more adults with the groups of children and teens. We also have windows in all the rooms of our chucrh. I am sure we do more that I don’t know about. I am proud of my chucrh and several others in our community of Bethel, Ohio that do the same. The place we need to watch are the private homes of our children, but I realize people need their privacy. We need trained people to watch the behavior of abused children and report it. Our public school teachers are a good line of defense but very often we miss those younger kids. It hasn’t been that long since a two year old was killed by his mother’s boyfriend and sent to prison. Too late for the boy, unfortunately. Since I am a survivor of sexual abuse I am very interested in your program. Thanks for allowing me to write. Frances J. Ginn.

Posted by: Lucia at July 13, 2012 5:03 PM

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