Would you support ending the airport pat downs?

[Stinky The Clown]

I would. They have demonstrated the only thing they accomplish is sucking money out of our treasury and out of every person who flies.

They have proved to be as useful as snowsuits in Fiji.

[stray cat]

1. I think we should get rid of metal detectors and secret service at presidential events

as well :sarcasm: since presidents have been killed they are clearly ineffective....

[Stinky The Clown]

2. That's a stupid thing to say

How is that discussing this issue?

[Brickbat]

3. Yep. Either that, or do them right -- train the workers properly and model it on the El-Al system.

This half-assed middle-of-the-road crap is just a money pit. Its reactionary bent drives me up the wall -- shoe bomber? Remove shoes! Underwear bomber? Focus on crotch! It's painfully obvious there's no innovative thinking, or up-to-date relevancy.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Exactly my point

They have the wrong focus and they do nothing at all. Not one damned thing.

I have no idea, but I'd guess there are, right now, people looking at the crowds with closed circuit teevee looking for certain behaviors. And if they're not, then they need to go to Vegas or Atlantic City and ask a kindly casino owner to show them how its done.

Confiscating an unfinished RedBull or a too-large Arid Roll-on is silly in the extreme.

[Brickbat]

Yes. Casino-style monitoring crossed my mind, too.

[jpak]

4. No - and I would not fly from an airport that did not take security seriously

ignoring the terrorist threat to air travelers is just plain stupid

[Stinky The Clown]

9. Who proposed ignoring it? I suggested stopping the stupid pat downs

[hlthe2b]

5. What do you propose as an alternative?

[Stinky The Clown]

11. Crowd scanning. Profiling. Preflight intelligence. A Frequent Flyer registry .......

..... and similar ideas.

I'm no security expert, but these pat down/peeping tom lines do nothing at all. In fact, they may be worse than nothing.

[hlthe2b]

19. Are you in favor of the body scans?

The media, it seems to me has not pointed out their limitation-- essentially they can not detect within a body cavity....:shrug:

I'm cynical enough to question anytime we embrace expensive technology which will reap profits for some corporation over the Israeli approach which is similar to what you describe, but not profitable.

[Stinky The Clown]

27. I think they have a lot to prove.

Again, I favor looking for bombers and not bombs.

Here's my attitude toward flying. It is not a right. It has rules. Rules need to be followed. Also, certain privacy might need to be given up. So long as flying isn't mandatory, they can go pretty far.

I am all for submitting to any sort of background check to be able to demonstrated by photo ID that I am a super low risk passenger and avoid all the bullshit. If you get the same ID, then please sit right next to me. I'd be very comfortable with that.

Concentrate on those who do not choose to be prescreened. And then do a better job. Talk to them. Ask them questions. Detain them if need be. Do so real profiling. Scan the crowds and have experts involved, not some minimum wage worker with 10 hours of training and an ill fitting suit that makes them look even more unprofessional than they already look.

[jmowreader]

31. And also make sure...

that when you say "profiling" the wingers KNOW what you mean.

Assuming that a man flying alone, acting extremely nervous, with no luggage, on a one-way plane ticket to the other side of the United States that he paid for in cash is probably up to no good, is profiling. That's what we should be doing.

Assuming that every man whose name is Muhammad or Abdul-Hakeem is a terrorist and he should be taken upstairs for a long session of interrogation, is racial profiling. That's what we should NOT be doing.

[Stinky The Clown]

34. That goes without saying.

Elsewhere in this thread I referred to it as "behavioral profiling".

Besides, racial profiling is non-productive:

[Lost-in-FL]

6. It is a source of jobs at least.

Airport check ups should not be terminated. At least not until better technology is developed.

[Stinky The Clown]

12. What? Better ways to scan people?

Why?

How about trying some actually proven ideas?

[Lost-in-FL]

20. "Better ways to scan people". Where do you get that from? Where did I said that?

Check ups might seem only cosmetic to you but they might have deterred some people. We don't know that. Those who are MOTIVATED enough WILL pass through security because they are ahead of the game. This is why better technology needs to be developed but just firing people won't do any better either.

May I remind you that the undie-bomber boarded in Europe. Was he deterred from boarding from the US because of local security practices? We don't know that.

[Stinky The Clown]

23. Where did I get that?

I got it by reading what you said.

Me: Cut the crap with airport pat downs.

You: No way. I want security. Or better technology.

I infer from that that you want better scanners since you didn't define technology.

Now .... my debate with you have gotten off track and into the weeds with minutia. I'm appy to discuss the issue., but discussing arcane details is not helpful in this thread. If you, start a new thread and I will maybe engage you there. I'm not blowing you off. I'm trying to keep my thread on the level I wish to discuss things .... and that is not in Obfuscationville.

[Lost-in-FL]

35. My answer to a generalization was a indefinite suggestion

Perhaps I didn't get the sense that my response to vagueness should involve an epistemology-like response.

[fascisthunter]

7. no...

I enjoy it too much

[Stinky The Clown]

13. Can't argue that one!

[SteelPenguin]

10. Absolutely Not

We can never be 100% safe. Ever. In anything we do. We could slip and fall down the stairs leaving our house to the airport and die. We could get in a car crash on the way to the airport and die. We could get struck by lightning walking from our car to the airport terminal shuttle and die. We could catch a disease from someone in the terminal and die (a few weeks later). We could e coli get food poisoning from the food court in the terminal before we board the plane, and die. Etc. Etc.

All that stuff is more likely to happen than dying from a terrorist attack on the plane itself.

Why? Well things like metal detectors, passport controls, screening of people and bags, pat downs when red flags are raised. Things like that have found numerous weapons, knives, guns, etc, and just knowing those methods are in place stops terrorists from sneaking things on planes.

Is it perfect? Of course not, because nothing can ever be 100% safe, or 100% perfect. Yet they dramatically help keep that risk of dying from a terrorist attack on a plane low. So low in fact, that I think we're in a sweet spot, where a 1 in 10,000,000 risk is pretty damn effective, and there's no need for further screening than what we have now, other than perhaps better trained people, and more communication between state and homeland security on visas.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. The current system let scrotum bomber through

We're looking for nail clippers when we should be looking for bombers.

Bombs don't kill people. Bombers do.

By starting with a frequent flyer registry we can clear 50% .... 75%? ..... whatever, of the flyers before they even get to the airport. Then do crowd scans. Do behavioral profiling. And clean up the fucked up Bush-created bureaucracy that is DHS/TSA. Make the no fly list meaningful. Things like that.

But collecting every nail clipper and throwing them in 55 gallon drums is stupid in the extreme.

[jpak]

18. The crotch bomber boarded in Lagos and Amsterdam - not JFK

sorry to inform you...

[Stinky The Clown]

24. "Sorry to inform me"

Why cop an attitude?

I would debate that on the grounds that to board a US flight, the departure security has to meet US standards.

Sorry to inform you.

I also "sorry to inform you" that I am ending debate with you due to your attitude. You're not debating in good faith. You're snarking.

[jmowreader]

32. And he COULD have been caught in Amsterdam

Amsterdam is one of the airports that has the kind of scanner that would have caught this guy, but their regulations prohibit sending anyone bound for the USA through it. WTF?

[jpak]

33. IIRC - the Bush administration prevented them from using these

privacy issues

[jmowreader]

37. Well, it's strange you mentioned "privacy" and "Bush administration"

This is the same fucker who did all the warrantless wiretapping, right?

[SteelPenguin]

22. you can take nail clippers on again

That was overkill. Still, is it overkill if it's a swiss army knife? An unscreened container of gel or liquid that could be a chemical weapon? People say yes, but it keeps the risk incredibly low.

Do you honestly think if we relaxed rules like that, that terrorists wouldn't sneak guns on planes? There are such things as ceramic guns, and it's easy to make bomb parts that you strap to your body that are caught by a metal detector or a patdown.

The reason they have to use weird chemicals and wear them in their underwear is BECAUSE we have these rules. Relaxing them would just make it easier for them to get on planes, and increase the risk to us.
We want to make it as hard as possible for bombers to get crap they need for bombs onto planes. A bomber without a bomb is impotent, so we look for both. We screen for bombers, and we screen for bombs.

Perhaps we could relax these restrictions and make the risk 1 in 1,000,000 instead of 1 in 10,000,000 but then you'd be seeing successfull terrorists attacks on planes yearly, which carries it's own mental price because even if the odds are insanely low, people don't think about odds.

It's like when we flew home one time and my wife was nervous as all get out. Gripping the seat. Praying. She hates flying and the landing was a little bumpy. Then we get in the cab and he's tearing around traffic and she's relaxed and falls asleep on me. She was FAR safer in the plane, than in the car, statistically, but people don't think in statistics.

[Stinky The Clown]

29. Try this again:

We Are Looking For Bombers, Not Bombs.

Secondarily looking for bombs is fine.

This will sound like snark, but consider it at its basic level: Bombers kill people, not bombs.

And no, the argument is fundamentally different than the similar sounding one used when talking about guns in our society.

[SteelPenguin]

38. You have to look for both

Not sure how that's not clear either. It's not secondary. If you JUST look for bombers you're gonna get people slipping through. People with clean or fake identification, dressed nicely, maybe acting normally, fake wife and baby with him.

But 20 pounds of TNT strapped to his chest.

Without looking for the bombs you make it easier on the bombers. Bombers can't blow anything up without bombs, so while you're obviously looking for bombers as much as possible, you keep looking for bombs so that it makes it harder for bombers.

Not sure how you're missing that part. A gunman is worthless without a gun. A bomber is worthless without a bomb. So yes, we need to do as much as possible to figure out who are bombers before they even get to the airport...but once they get there, we need to make sure that we make it as hard as possible to sneak something onto the plane.

Will pat-downs find everything? No of course not. Will they make it much harder to conceal bomb parts to get on a plane? Yes.

[HipChick]

14. I requested a male pat me down...

as of yet they have failed to yield to my request..so no,it might be as close as i get to nookie all year..:rofl:

[Stinky The Clown]

17. Oh stop it .....

..... you're clearly a thrill seeker!

:hi:

[LiberalFighter]

15. Hell yes. I would also restructure it so they have less current screeners

and have trained personnel that would use more reliable profiling methods that involve interviewing passengers that may be terrorists. They of course would be paid more and would need to keep their training up to date.

[Stinky The Clown]

21. I am not suggesting this is the be-all and end-all, but consider ......

What is we had a frequent flyer registry? Or even a registry that anyone could apply to and get prescreened? Prescreens get through any gate security in an expedited fashion. And then we use the surplus resources for thsat to do more intensive screening - including questioning - for those who choose not to be prescreened.

Frequent flyers would pay for the background checks to get their expedited identity cards. At the airport they do little more than simply check in. Some cursory check, but basically they get expedited.

Infrequent flyers can apply for a prescreen. Since it is less thorough, they get a little more attention.

Then those not at all prescreened get more scrutiny. Some of them get real scrutiny.

We're looking for bombers. Not some teenager with a labia piercing that keep setting off the crotch sniffers ... er .... metal detectors.

[HipChick]

25. They already tried it..the Clear program...Registered Travellers..

It went out of biz..TSA were helpful in snuffing it out..

[Stinky The Clown]

28. That's called "self preservation"

TSA needs the shit kicked out of them.

They also need to get the neocon thinkers rooted out of their top management.

[SmileyRose]

26. but I'm looking forward to having my boobs and crotch felt up in public

at least let them keep feeling everyone up until July!! It will be the closest think I'll have to sex for at least 20 years. Don't spoil it for me!!

[Stinky The Clown]

30. That's the pay line off to the side. Haven't you seen the coin slots and the little privacy screens?

The "screeners" :wink: :wink: are topless and work for tips.

[LWolf]

36. Yes.

But then, I was never in favor of them to begin with.