FIGHT THE POWER

[Klavdy]

Sometimes you read things that renew your hope in the great nation that is The United States of America.


"Recently, I got to sit down with TSA Chairman John Pistole for a friendly interview. Here's a transcript of the actual audio:

Me: Hi John. I hope that's not too familiar – I feel like we should be on a first-name basis since you've touched my junk. Anyways, let's get right to it. Before I ask any hard questions, I'd like to establish some facts we agree on:

So, we both agree that terrorists, in as much as they have a master plan, are not out to kill every single American. They are, in fact, just out to create fear in us: a persistent, nagging, every day fear that causes us to doubt everything we believe in, a fear that grinds at us until we've lost the joy of being Americans, and we'll finally do anything to stop it.

Pistole: That might be a bit of a dramitic—

Me: So my first question is, should the TSA's only priority be preventing any terrorist attacks, or should it pay more attention to what effect it is having on Americans' morale?

Pistole: Well, we feel that flying is an exception to normal rules. What you have is essentially a giant flying bomb with people trapped aboard it, and as we saw in 9/11 this bomb can be used to devast—

Me: Right, planes are huge bombs – and, as Bruce Schneier pointed out in 2005, we immediately reinforced cabin doors after 9/11, so planes can't be used that way by terrorists any more: there won't be any more 9/11-style flying-planes-into-buildings attacks.

So, now the only significant thing about air travel is that it's a bunch of people in a small space who can't easily leave. Which is a lot like riding a bus, or being in a crowded coffee shop. So do you think Americans should surrender our constitutional rights in those situations, and, if not, what exactly makes air travel special?

Pistole: Wait, uh, what? You said this was going to be a friendly interview. What hap—

Me: Come to think of it, it's also exactly like being in the TSA's security line, which often have more people in them than the planes themselves. What exactly is going to prevent terrorists from just bringing bombs into lines with them? Before you answer, note that this isn't hypothetical — terrorists around the world strike cafés and lines for exactly this reason.

Pistole: I don't have to stand here and—

Me: That brings me nicely to my next point, which is that you've announced you're going to sue Americans for $11,000 if they decide they have had enough and want to leave your theater of security at the airport. Now, this question is a two-parter: Do you think it's somehow smarter to keep potential bombers in a crowded TSA line than in a parking lot, and do you think suicide bombers are afraid of getting fined $11,000 in addition to, like, committing suicide?

Pistole: You're oversimplifying what is clearly a complicated—

Me: Oh, speaking of complicated, what about the color-coded security levels? Can you please tell us what specifically Americans should do at magenta level that we shouldn't at mauve? Actual examples, please. Is there some level where we should not pay attention if some dude tries to light his underwear or shoes on fire?

Pistole: Ok, that was DHS, not the TSA, and they just announced they were getting rid of it–

Me: Wow, they're ditching color levels after only 10 years of having a policy with no visible effect except to confuse and scare Americans? I'm impressed with the... you said DHS? Too bad that's not your organization. I was about to give you kudos.

Anyhow, that leads in nicely to my next question, which is, when the TSA decided we all needed to be "safer," what process did it use to decide how to proceed? Did you study the world's safest (and least safe) airports, and correlate that with the number of terrorist threats they face, and imitate their best practices? Did you look at Israel's model, where they rely much more on talking to each passenger and watching for squirrelly responses — a model used by our own border service for a couple hundred years?

Or did you buy the most expensive gadgets you could find from a company that at least seven US representatives and two US senators own stock in?

Pistole: Look, we're finding more terrorists are using powders and liquids in their bombs, and we need to–

Me: Isn't all this talk about liquids and solids just a distraction from the fundamental issue, which is that every terrorist attack we've had since 9/11 was thwarted by vigilant Americans citizens, not the TSA, and all the TSA has done is introduce discomfort and delays into air travel?

Which brings me to this question: If you hired a security guard to watch your house, and 10 years later your neighbors said, "Hey, several times now dudes have tried to steal your shit, but we came over and stopped them each time after your security guy let them through," would you continue to employ him? Especially if every time you tried to enter your house, he grabbed your nuts and took naked pictures of your wife?

Honestly, John, how do you still have a job?

Pistole: Look, we stop lots of attacks before they even—

Me: Except you don't — you crow about it every time one of the passengers thwarts an attack as if you had something to do with it, and then you buy yourself some even more expensive equipment to make yourselves feel like real men, and make us do some new dance while we wait in the security line.

Which is my final question: by making us undress, forcing us to either be touched in inappropriate places or be viewed completely naked, exposing us to unknown amounts of radiation, and generally humiliating us, all the while claiming your agents are above the laws of the United States and somehow in charge of our police force as well, isn't the TSA basically following the techniques of the history's most repressive regimes? By telling us we can't leave security once we started, that this is all for our own good, that we cannot be trusted, aren't you robbing of us of the feeling that we control our own destiny? Aren't you, in fact, creating a population that will not keep defending against terrorist attacks, because you've inculcated a learned helplessness in all of us?

I'm sure you've heard Benjamin Franklin's quote a million times: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." But have you ever really listened to it? Because it seems almost unthinkably arrogant for you to tell us that after 200 years of living under the American constitution Ben helped write, you have a better way, which is to make us "safe" with fear and personal invasion. It seems like you are pissing on the graves of the millions of Americans who died defending our constitution in world wars and other struggles, who were willing to trade their lives for not their liberty but ours, for you to tell us that now we must give up our constitutional protections in order to be safe in our lives.

You, sir, work against the constitution of the United States, you work against the happiness and welfare of the American people, and I brand you a terrorist.

Pistole: Fair enough.

[Klavdy]

TSA Breast Milk Screening Harassment Updated

[Marsh White]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/disgusted-tsa-agents-also-calling-for-end-to-body,18557/?utm_souce=popbox

[rktmanfj]

No one 'makes' these people do anything...

If they don't want to do what is required to pass the checkpoint, they can simply turn around and leave.     

Randy T
Indy

[Flying Scotsman]

My observation is most people here are paranoid.Millions of dollars are being waisted because of a few scared people.

[andyoutandabout]

Try dealing with Homeland security - then the going gets tough.

[Mark Olson]

so are the car rentals up in volume now.

[rktmanfj]

so are the car rentals up in volume now.

Maybe.

More likely, a lot of the riders returned to Greyhound.     

Airport clientele ain't what it used to be.

Randy T
Indy

[Keith]

TSA Breast Milk Screening Harassment Updated

I'm not buyin it......why would she be bringing unrefrigerated breast milk on a plane for her son's dinner??just stick your breast directly in the kids mouth when you get in the door..I think this girl was looking to make some kind of point,get publicity personally I think an all out boycott of the airline industry would be more effective only because once your in their sandbox they have you by the balls, or breastmilk as the case may be

[Klavdy]

so are the car rentals up in volume now.

So do motor vehicle related fatalities.
Really, more people are dying on the roads because of the TSA's stupid policies, this is factual.

From a study by Cornell University:

"In 2007, the researchers studied specifically the effects of a change to security practices instituted by the TSA in late 2002. They concluded that this change reduced the number of air travellers by 6%, and estimated that consequently, 129 more people died in car accidents in the fourth quarter of 2002.
Extrapolating this rate of fatalities, New York Times contributor Nate Silver remarked that this is equivalent to "four fully-loaded Boeing 737s crashing each year."

Israel has fantastic security at their Airports.
It should be the model.

Back to the vid posted earlier:That manager in the vid,if he treated one of your loved ones that way, is there not a man amongst you that would not track down that scumbag and teach him the error of his ways?
He was NOT "Just doing his job".
What vile and despicable creature.

[Klavdy]

TSA Breast Milk Screening Harassment Updated

I'm not buyin it......why would she be bringing unrefrigerated breast milk on a plane for her son's dinner??just stick your breast directly in the kids mouth when you get in the door..I think this girl was looking to make some kind of point,get publicity personally I think an all out boycott of the airline industry would be more effective only because once your in their sandbox they have you by the balls, or breastmilk as the case may be

Apart from when you were an infant,do you have any experience with breast feeding Mothers, babies and their needs?

Boycott the Airlines?
The Airlines don't run the TSA,what point is there in boycotting them?

[Klavdy]

No one 'makes' these people do anything...

If they don't want to do what is required to pass the checkpoint, they can simply turn around and leave.     

Randy T
Indy

Randy, you have a direct connection and interest in defending the TSA's practices.

Seems that once you enter airport security, you need to be subjected to it -- whether you decide to fly or not.

Say you don't get an enhanced pat down, you go still through the X-Ray machine,,,
    A typical dental X-ray exposes the patient to about 2 millirems of radiation. According to one widely cited estimate, exposing each of 10,000 people to one rem (that is, 1,000 millirems) of radiation will likely lead to 8 excess cancer deaths. Using our assumption of linearity, that means that exposure to the 2 millirems of a typical dental X-ray would lead an individual to have an increased risk of dying from cancer of 16 hundred-thousandths of one percent. Given that very small risk, it is easy to see why most rational people would choose to undergo dental X-rays every few years to protect their teeth.

    More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.

Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists.

[Dan Filetti]

I'm not buyin it......why would she be bringing unrefrigerated breast milk on a plane for her son's dinner??

Thought the same thing.  They even indicated that she had caused trouble before, and were going to need to play her game/ dog and pony show...  Also, where was the kid?

Dan  

[Harvy]

I'm not buyin it......why would she be bringing unrefrigerated breast milk on a plane for her son's dinner??

Thought the same thing.  They even indicated that she had caused trouble before, and were going to need to play her game/ dog and pony show...  Also, where was the kid?

Dan  

She'd be lucky if she could lactate at all after all that shit.......the kid was at home (I assume home was her intended destination).

Harvy

[Dan Filetti]

    More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.

Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists.

Huh?  less than 10 people per year is deadlier than the terrorists?  Come now.  The 9/11 attacks alone killed nearly 3,000 people, all in.  To be 'deadlier' would in fact take more than 300 years.

I'm not a fan of the TSA getting all uppity.  But this rationale is myopic and not one of your better ones Klavdy.

Dan