The Reasonoids have a smart, well-documented take on media reaction to the TSA pat downs. My favorite: the LA Times editorial titled “Shut up and be scanned”.
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by DougJ| 257 Comments
This post is in: Going Galt
The Reasonoids have a smart, well-documented take on media reaction to the TSA pat downs. My favorite: the LA Times editorial titled “Shut up and be scanned”.
Comments are closed.
The Dangerman
If your name is Erin Andrews or similar celebrity with similar concerns, I might be able to understand not wanting to get ones goods exposed.
Everyone else? Shut up and get scanned.
TooManyJens
It’s not even that the media are more statist than liberal — that still imputes more of an ideology to them than they actually have. With a few notable exceptions, they’re just lazy and stupid and drawn to power.
General Stuck
I read the Santa Fe paper’s take and they said these images appear in another room out of sight of everyone but the image reader. I was wondering, since I don’t fly, is if the images for males and females are separated and sent to female reader for female flyers? I think it would be improper for mixing the two, but otherwise, these pics just look like faceless manikins to me. So what is the problem.
The patdowns would fall under the same scenario, but I can see where folks don’t like those. I wouldn’t
jurassicpork
At my age, gate rape is the only sex I can get.
ChrisNYC
Just for the record, there is no question that this is Drudge-created.
January 2010
http://www.infowars.com/drudge-big-sis-wants-to-see-under-your-clothes/
August 2010
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201008050012
There was a June sally as well, but I can’t find it now.
As Drum noted, “Liberals have been badly rolled on this.”
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/11/living-matt-drudges-world
Too bad the President and Napolitano are the only people who have the balls to stand up to Drudge and the brains to see this fake populism coming from a mile away.
DougJ
@ChrisNYC:
I don’t like these editorials about this, regardless.
BR
@ChrisNYC:
I don’t buy it. I’m upset about it, and it’s not because of any Drudge stories, or any influenced by Drudge. It’s because the policy makes no sense, and it’s another TSA boondoggle at that.
Read Bruce Schneier – he reminds his readers constantly that none of the TSA’s policies have made sense for a long time. (And he’s no conservative, though he is a security expert.)
Corner Stone
@The Dangerman:
Why?
jwb
@ChrisNYC: It’s more like the conservatives saw this as an opportunity to get the left civil libertarians to pile on the “government can’t do anything right” bandwagon. But what’s left civil libertarian supposed to do, say, no I approve of this because Drudge opposes it? That makes no more sense than trusting the motives of Reason when it declares that the media is more statist than liberal.
The Dangerman
@Corner Stone:
Why not?
me
You can see where Reason is going with this. They want to replace the TSA with private companies to do the screening. Then they’ll want multiple lines with a different company running each one so that the screening can be competitive and ideologically proper.
Sophist
Oh, fuck that. Terrorists don’t get to make US policy. That’s like saying that all the criminals out there are really the ones responsible for a cop giving some black kid a kicking for no damn reason, so why are we being so hard on him?
DougJ
@jwb:
Well, Reason makes their point well in this case, IMHO.
Three-nineteen
@The Dangerman: And when the next terrorist shoves plastic explosives up his ass?
Chris Grrr
Who owns the LA Times, again?
Works for me.
ChrisNYC
@BR: Well, separate from your personal likes or dislikes (which, really, you can see are probably not going to be reflected in policy for a country of 250 million people, right?), Drudge saw what this was and pushed it.
Pisses me off no end that the supposed political geniuses of the left blogosphere ate it up. Political f’in malpractice indeed. When did it become “liberal values” to demean civil service workers and call them freaking perverts, to push the meme that govt can’t do anything right, to follow a line of argument that so obviously leads to “well, let’s just pat down the dark people” that you’d really really have to be blind not to see it.
At what point does the frustrated left look in the mirror and say, “Part of the problem is that we suck as advocates”? I’d settle for a moratorium on, “Here’s what the President should do — easy peasy” pieces.
calling all toasters
@DougJ: The soft bigotry of absolutely no expectations.
The Dangerman
@Three-nineteen:
By that reasoning, we shouldn’t have any screening or any restrictions on what one can carry on a plane.
MikeJ
@ChrisNYC: So if drudge comes out against leprosy we should be for it?
@The Dangerman:
Amen. We shouldn’t.
jo6pac
@jurassicpork: Thanks for the laugh and the great idea!
General Stuck
One of these days, the incompetent bomb makers in Yemen, or wherever, are going to figure out how to make a detonator that works and bring down a plane. Then we will hear nothing but how negligent and inept the government and Obama was for not scanning people.
The Dangerman
@MikeJ:
Works for me, too. Of course, I haven’t flown in more than a decade, so I barely count.
Of course, such a libertarian solution won’t matter for much when airlines can’t insure their aircraft, thus ending airline travel.
Delia
@ChrisNYC:
I haven’t looked at Drudge in years. In the first place I don’t think government experts who assure us that radiation levels are perfectly safe have a very good track record. In the second place I don’t want some stranger groping me who doesn’t have a good medical reason for doing so. In the third place I think this is all one more layer of security theater. Jeffrey Goldberg (yes, I know who he is) was on KO tonight and he made the unassailable logical point that if a terrorist wearing some sort of underwear bomb has made it as far as the security check-in line, which can contain hundreds of people at a large airport, he can just as easily detonate himself standing in line if trying to board is too difficult. This remains just as much a useless charade as throwing all your little bottles of hand lotion, shampoo, toothpaste, and water into those giant barrels.
MikeJ
@General Stuck: They’ve already brought down planes. Check out what they did during the reign of error of st ronnie.
People still weren’t that concerned about it.
MikeJ
@The Dangerman: Do you think they get lower insurance rates because you can’t bring on bottled water or a penknife?
ChrisNYC
@jwb: How about not swallowing lies whole and at face value? The kid who was “strip searched” had his shirt taken off by his father. Oops.
How about not denigrating TSA workers who, really, come now, don’t want to touch some traveler’s penis. They want a steady job with good benes and, wow, this one doesn’t require a bachelor’s. Too bad that in return, they were made the butt (ha!) of an SNL skit, because of their perv tendencies. Oops.
How about phrasing the complaints not as “OMG THE CONSTITUTION!!!!!” (which is utter bullshit) but instead as, “Yeah, this is not optimum. The DHS should review the policy. But, I know that where we don’t want to go is any kind of ‘targeted’ searches because, we don’t make broad generalizations on the basis of color or race or country of origin.”
geg6
So according to some, the fact that suddenly wingnuts are screaming about privacy violations means that I should submit to security theater gladly because it’ll piss off a wingnut?
Sorry, but I have boycotted flying for over five years now because of the absurd shit that prevents exactly zero terrorist attacks. I’m not about to change my mind and happily allow some less-even-than-a-rent-a-cop grope me or zap me with lethal levels of radiation or take nude pictures of me than can then be posted online since there us little to stop them just to piss off a wingnut. If I was willing to do such a thing, I wouldn’t be a liberal, I’d be a wingnut.
Three-nineteen
@The Dangerman: So you see no difference between going through a metal detector and having someone put two or three fingers in your anus? By that reasoning, it shouldn’t be too much to ask.
I’m not even necessarily against the scanners, but the TSA is saying this is essential for safety. If it’s so essential, why isn’t air travel suspended until scanners are put in every airport? And why doesn’t everyone have to be scanned?
Yutsano
Am I wrong for thinking Reason was scraping the bottom of the barrel for getting an editorial from the Spokesman-Rewview? Really? A Spokane newspaper? The city that can’t get its shit together if you doubled its tax base? Maybe I’m being unduly harsh, but the last good thing to come out of Spokane was Bing Crosby. And even that’s debatable.
The Dangerman
@MikeJ:
Can’t say for sure; I can say with relative certainty that ending all searching (as in “Amen, works for me”) that insurance rates would be prohibitive.
soonergrunt
Driving–costs less, more environmentally friendly, more relaxing, play the music I want at the volume I want, nobody touching my junk, nobody blowing me up because their junk didn’t get touched.
The actual useful answer to this is more high-speed passenger rail.
All of this whining and carrying on, one would think that the moment there’s a successful terrorist attack that people would stand up and accept responsibility for their choices and then…who the fuck am I kidding? The screaming and teeth gnashing over the government not doing enough to protect us would be deafening.
arguingwithsignposts
Reason can suck a big ole bag of whatever your flavor of appendage of the month is. Get back to me when they favor regulation of financial instruments. Fuckers.
wasabi gasp
We are all pissbags now.
Three-nineteen
@soonergrunt: And much better odds of getting killed.
The Dangerman
@Three-nineteen:
Strawman.
However, in the interest of playing along, if it was proven that a jumbo jet was blown out of the sky because someone was able to cram enough explosives up his or her ass, then anal searches would have to be considered, huh? Only alternative would be profiling, which is clearly a worse solution.
Delia
@Three-nineteen:
See, there’s a logical inconsistency here that’s been bugging me. Since the big brouhaha started Pistole’s fallback position has been that very few people get scanned, only the ones who set off the metal detectors. But supposedly the scanners were invented to detect nonmetal explosives. So what’s the point of using them only where metals are suspected?
Again, this whole thing is not serious detection. It’s one more layer of theater.
ChrisNYC
@Delia: It’s not really about you, personally, looking at Drudge or being friendly to Drudge.
Drudge picked this issue almost a year ago. He hammered it and the red blogs went right along with him. And, ta da — a guy who thinks “government can’t do anything right” and that CA keeps lists of gun owners so that the coming seizure of weapons will be easier walks into an airport, two weeks before the busiest travel day, and yells, “Don’t touch my junk.” (Important to note that it was the traveler who made the takeaway statement. He repeatedly said, and it was clear on the video, that the TSA did nothing untoward to him. The video was news because that guy said what he said.)
If people want to think the outrage over this is grass rootsy, whatever. There’s a reason why maybe twenty issues get talked about in any one day and it’s not because of some mind meld.
jwb
@DougJ: Yes, in fact, I don’t disagree with their point on statist media. But given everything I know about Reason, it does make me ask what are the politics motivating the author to make this point and how is running down media as statist rather than liberal going to benefit the Reasonoids’ paymasters?
Martin
So why doesn’t Reason point out that airports could opt out of the TSA screenings by the end of 2003? Where’s the argument for the free-market solution to this, instead of just arguing that the free-market media isn’t giving them the coverage that they want?
They’re still full of shit.
soonergrunt
@Three-nineteen: but that continues to drop as a function relative to the population base each year, and within twenty years automobile accidents will be incredibly rare.
Of course, if I could buy a reasonably priced high-speed rail ticket from Oklahoma City to San Diego, we would visit the Grandparents more often.
Life is full of trade-offs, isn’t it?
I’m really just laughing at all of the whining about this.
Nobody has a right to air travel, and most of the people I know couldn’t afford it anyway. This is not really a problem for people I know.
Watching all of this, there’s an element of the same kind of revulsion at the self-centered whining and bellyaching as one experiences listening to the banksters complaining about how people are talking about them.
It’s not the same level of stupidity warranting contempt, but it’s not far below it, either.
General Stuck
@MikeJ:
Though I don’t believe an argument that it has happened before is a good one, so we should not try and prevent more attacks in the future, like Dangerman said, he doesn’t fly, and neither do I, so it is easy for me not to have a personal stake in what happens at airports.
but you can bet when it happens nowadays, aside from the tragedy of the victims and their loved ones, the political reverberations will not be anything like the 80’s when there was some pol sanity in this country.
ChrisNYC
@jwb: I responded and I see your point — but my comment is in moderation. My response, in a nutshell, is that I want left civil libertarians to be smarter. To be good advocates.
jwb
@General Stuck: But that’s going to happen regardless of what security is in place. So the question is do you believe that these scanners and pat downs actually improve security or are just so much security theater?
BR
@ChrisNYC:
I see the TSA as part of the permanent national security state that has been growing for decades, especially since the time of Reagan. It’s time we dismantled it, and I don’t see anything noble about working for the TSA.
As Bruce Schneier says, national security needs police work – as in the FBI doing behind the scenes investigation – not security theater. We need to remind ourselves that there is no such thing as perfect security and that getting into a car accident on the way to work is more likely than being injured for any reason, let alone a malicious one, on a flight.
Sure Drudge may have his reasons to dislike the TSA, but doesn’t mean I don’t have mine.
Edit: oh, and speaking as one of those brown people who’s been “randomly” screened for patdowns, extra checks, etc. for a decade, I can tell you that racial profiling is nothing new to me – it’s a fact of life.
MikeJ
Other countries don’t have cavity searches, don’t have nude pictures of passengers, allow liquids, allow pen knives.
Is it more dangerous to fly the Frankfurt-Berlin shuttle on Lufthansa than it is to fly the DC-NY shuttle on Delta?
TooManyJens
@ChrisNYC:
This mentality that if people on the Right are against it, we should be for it is driving me crazy. As other commenters have noted, this policy is just particularly invasive and dehumanizing security theater. We should be careful not to repeat false claims, and we should make sure to tie this policy to all the other national security theater and abridgment of civil liberties that have happened under BOTH parties. But we shouldn’t roll over and accept it just because Drudge is against it. I’m not willing to give him that kind of control over what I think.
Delia
@ChrisNYC:
I gave a list of reasons that don’t have anything to do with right wing or libertarian knee jerk issues. I don’t want private enterprise companies taking over contracts and doing the same damn thing. They’d probably be worse.
Like a lot of people I now avoid flying when I can. Between the airlines and the security theater it’s become very unpleasant over the last few years. I’m going overseas for Christmas so it’s unavoidable, but I’m leaving from the small local airport that isn’t yet on the scanner list, so I’m hoping to avoid the latest nightmare.
Three-nineteen
@The Dangerman: I was just responding to your strawman of “if you don’t like the scanners, you obviously think there shouldn’t be any security at all”.
The justification for the hurry-up on the scanners is the underwear bomber. So if and when an ass-bomber happens, what do you think the government will want to do for our safety next?
@soonergrunt: My point (which I completely forgot to mention in that post, sorry) is that air travel, including accidents from mechanical failure and operator error, is exponentially safer than car travel now, let alone getting killed by a terrorist. Opting to drive is still more dangerous than flying with no security whatsoever.
Edited because wow, the grammar.
junebug
@DougJ:
I used to love you DougJ. If you can’t see this set up, then I am flabbergasted.
This is the second time today that I have been disappointed by BJ — first it was the commenters not understanding the cheater thread (what denseness!), then this.
I will now read the rest of the thread.
General Stuck
@jwb:
Well now, that is the relevant question, isn’t it. I do not know the answer to that question, but I wonder that the TSA would be standing pat under the withering fire they are getting from all directions, if they didn’t believe there was some benefit to it. And getting scanned, whether or not it can detect explosive underwear with a lot of accuracy, I think may act as a deterrent. And unless there is some measurable health impact to getting scanned, what is the big deal for not submitting to it? as per my question in my first comment.
But I do not see this as some big brother boogyman authoritarian power grab by evil statists. That is absurd and paranoid bullshit imo. and some ideological pol theater in it’s own right.
The Dangerman
@General Stuck:
True enough, but it’s all about the contemporary costs.
Can’t compare a TWA airliner sitting on a runway for a couple weeks, even with the loss of a Sailor, with the costs of destroying/damaging a good portion of lower Manhattan.
If the terrorists would play nice and promise to blow up planes over the Atlantic, few would care about the loss of a plane and small number of crew/passengers. Sadly, they don’t play nice (and, frankly, I’m not all that concerned about terrorists using planes as missiles in the future as I entirely expect that anyone causes a problem with a box cutter and the pilots are depressurizing the cabin, not opening the door).
ChrisNYC
@geg6: It’s really not about pissing off a wingnut. It’s about advocating smartly.
Last I checked, the left liked govt and thought it could actually play a role. So howabout we lay off the “rent-a-cop” nonsense when we refer to people who are just trying to get by, do their job, have NO ROLE in the setting of the policy and, I promise, don’t want to touch anyone’s sacred private places, other than those of their intimate partners.
Howabout we have a little foresight and say, “Well, profiling –we know that’s bad, because, after all, we’re liberals. Maybe that means we need to spread the inconvenience around, because we definitely don’t want to push for a dark people line and lighter people line. Maybe that means the DHS should take a thoughtful review of the policy but GAD we certainly are not going to climb on some, ‘just frisk the terrorist-looking people damnit’ nonsense.”
I mean, really, is it liberal values that Al-Alwaki is given every benefit of the doubt but anonymous guy that works at DFW gets branded a pervert?
NonyNony
@The Dangerman:
Really? Some guy shoves explosives up his ass and you think that “welp, we’ve got to give body cavity searches to everyone” could possibly be and appropriate response? Ever?
Well, no. Stupid profiling (like singling out everyone who “looks Mooslim” for a body cavity search) is a worse solution. Smart profiling, on the other hand, as part of a comprehensive policing policy at the airport, would be a better solution than we have now.
But that would require that we staff the positions currently staffed by underpaid TSA drones with highly paid professionals who were trained in pyschology and law enforcement. In effect, we’d need to have FBI agents or Federal Air Marshals or some other folks actually trained to do real policing in those spots. And we can’t have that because that would be expensive (and wouldn’t give nice fat contracts to companies building scanning equipment). So we’re stuck with security theater instead of actual security. And we have to take off our shoes because some asshole decided to try to blow up a plane with his shoe, and have our “junk” scanned because another asshole decided to blow up a plane with his underwear. And someday we’ll have to have our bowels scanned because some other asshole decides to blow up a plane with his asshole.
I have no doubt that we’ll end up there some day. And bin Laden and his cronies are laughing at us the whole time. You can just see him sitting in his cave telling his guys “I’ll bet I can get those fucking Americans to consent to an anal probe to get onto a plane. They’re so predictable.”
TooManyJens
Josh Marshall’s take on this at TPM has been pissing me off. From the email I just sent him:
The part in bold is what really makes me sympathetic to ChrisNYC’s opinion that the particular way this issue has arisen is a set-up.
junebug
@Three-nineteen:
I’m pretty sure it would kill them before they could even get into the boarding line or what ever it is called. Give me one credible case of a person having explosives up his/her ass and living to click the trigger.
There is a reason the dogs that were implanted with explosives died.
This idea is fantastical. An it is just the sort of wingnut logic that I find on wingnut blogs. Didn’t expect to find it here.
Comrade Luke
@Yutsano: Ahem…Gonzaga University graduate here…
The Dangerman
@Three-nineteen:
Asked and answered; it’s either cavity search, one can’t fly without taking a crap on camera prior to boarding, or similar draconian measure.
Someone said it above; as long as people are going to pay, politically or economically, if a plane gets blown out of the sky, there will be measures taken for reasonable safety. Sucks, but that’s the way it is.
ChrisNYC
@TooManyJens: See comment below. It’s really really not about “he’s against it so I’m for it.” Be loudly fabulously wonderfully against it. Just be smart about it. ‘Cause the narrative here is that the govt can’t do anything, people who work for the govt are deserving of nothing but scorn and wild accusations of sexual assault, people who don’t look like terrorists can’t be terrorists, and Napolitano wants to see people naked. Messaging fail.
junebug
@ChrisNYC:
Agreed on all points.
Very disappointing.
Buying in, uncritically, of ultra sensational personal reporting, especially when it’s a hard walkback — like the little boy whose father took his shirt off — none of you must listen talk radio and hear the pejorative terms it’s all put in.
You know what they are going after. Most of you think the language is funny, but those talk radio types have the TSA raping people.
I’m glad the TSA is fighting back.
MattR
@ChrisNYC: I agree with you about the demonization of the random TSA agents who are just doing their jobs, though there are definitely TSA agents who go beyond that and need to be called out. However I have to disagree with your notion that because “Last I checked, the left liked govt and thought it could actually play a role. ” does not mean that I have to support the government when it is doing something stupid. In fact weeding out stupid policies is a vital part of making government work.
DougJ
@junebug:
Maybe this means I’m part-libertarian, but when some annoying invasive security measure comes in, the media reaction should not be “suck on this”. This doesn’t even mean I’m against screening — I’m not sure what I think about it yet, I lean towards being for it — but I dislike editors telling people to suck on this if they don’t like it.
We give something up when we let ourselves be screened and patted down. Maybe it’s for the best, but I’d like every new security measure to be debated, not just accepted.
BR
@ChrisNYC:
Again, this is already the case. Sure it isn’t stated policy, but I can tell you it’s the case. I get racially profiled at the airport, and it’s been going on for years. So I think it’s kind of a useless point to make as a counterargument against complaining about the TSA’s policies. (I would go into a little bit about white privilege (and I mean of the public, not of you or anyone here) – of not having to be aware of racial profiling if it’s done unofficially and surreptitiously, but instead, just go watch some of Tim Wise’s talks.)
Suffern Ace
@ChrisNYC: You forgot that lowly paid people are likely perverts and borderline criminals and that since these are union employees there is nothing that can be done about it. Pretty much all the ugly of my tribe comes out when they feel threatened and sometimes it feels as if they have changed tribes.
junebug
@MikeJ:
ASS. You ate the whole thing and then turn around and bite the person who pointed it out.
ASS.
asiangrrlMN
Personally, I don’t like the idea of scanning or pat-downs. I don’t read the Drudge or anything like that. And, I would not feel any more comfortable if it were done by private enterprise, either. My body is my own. I do not want some stranger looking at it or touching it regardless of whether or not it’s anonymous. You can discern genitalia and breasts on the images, and that makes me uncomfortable. When I walk into an airport, I can think of many ways to kill many people without even going through security. These measures are security theatre, meant to give the appearance of doing something without actually doing it.
I am used to the indignities of being ‘randomly’ searched at the airport (ironically, I was searched much more often pre-9/11 than after), so it’s not that I object to security measures per se (though I do hate being profiled for whatever reason). I just don’t like these. I can tolerate the pat-downs, barely, but if my airport has the scanners in place, then I foresee me not flying any time in the near future.
Three-nineteen
@junebug: Um, not sure what you mean by implanted. I’m talking about hiding something in your anus to get it past security and then taking it out on the plane to do something dastardly. I’m no expert, but I imagine if drug mules can hide enough smack up there to make smuggling worthwhile, an enterprising young suicide bomber could figure something out.
The scanners aren’t going to deter someone determined to martyr themselves for their god. In fact, I’m pretty sure that anal probes for everyone at all security checkpoints aren’t going to deter that person either. It’s just humiliating and invasive for the 99.99999999999999999999999999999999% of air travelers who aren’t terrorists.
mikefromArlington
You know what’s f’ed up.
I was reading this story at Rawstory yesterday about how the owner of one of the companies creating the scanner was with Obama in India, etc.
Anyways, here’s a line from the story:
Chopra’s company manufactures the Rapiscan brand of body scanners
Rapiscan?!?!?
I mean, really? Is that the best name they could come up with? Like people didn’t have to be reminded they feel like they are getting raped when scanned.
Someone needs to go back to the drawing board.
MikeJ
@TooManyJens: Nice email. Thanks.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Had to read some of the comments. I love how there was the “liberals complained during Bush but aren’t complaining now” thread. I guess they don’t get out much.
Yutsano
@Comrade Luke: Heh. Go Zags. Decent law school too. The Spokesman is still fucking fishwrap.
kwAwk
I’m not sure where and when we became the America that would rather have nude pictures taken of their children than face a 1 in 10,000,000 chance of dying in a terrorist attack.
junebug
@DougJ:
Maybe I’m not libertarian at all. And if you lean toward libertarians, in whatever case, you are not who I thought you were.
Maybe I’m too trusting (I don’t think so). But I went through the body scan at Logan in Boston earlier this year. It was no big deal.
I know that the new pat down is new, but if people just followed instructions and went through the body scan — no problem.
I also know that even as an educator working with other educators, I could write instructions for my colleagues in Latvian and they would read it (!) and still have to have me repeat it to them verbally. Because they never read anything.
I’ll ask one thing — don’t turn into a Glen Greenwald. ok?
TooManyJens
@ChrisNYC: Yeah, I saw what you were saying in later comments, and I totally agree.
eir
@soonergrunt…
How can you possibly think that automobile fatalities will EVER be “incredibly rare?”
Highways are full of people, sometimes intoxicated, operating 2000-lb machinery at 70+ mph within feet of one another. Most people aren’t even close when estimating their reaction time. I’m always surprised that there aren’t more wrecks. I rarely drive these days, but whenever I do, I see multiple near-crashes per day. (granted, my city is full of the most moronic drivers I have ever seen.)
Even if you think that airbags, computer control, etc. will reduce fatalities but not crashes, we still have 18-wheelers sharing the same highways with sedans. The 18-wheeler is going to win no matter how well your airbag works.
Plus, just because you don’t die in a crash doesn’t mean you escape unscathed. Data for the number and morbidity of crashes seemed a little bit more difficult to find on a cursory google search, so maybe they’ve also gone down, but I wouldn’t be surprised if fatality reduction were due in part to improved medical intervention. And, frankly, I’m not sure whether I’d rather die or be fully paralyzed in a car accident. Long-distance car travel still makes me very uneasy.
Plus, you seem to be ignoring the fact that a lot of the “whining” is due to the fact that the more invasive screening isn’t being implemented in a way that really improves security. And, as bloggers have pointed out ad nauseum, it’s not a right to fly, but a lot of people have jobs that require it.
rageahol
@General Stuck:
you dont have to think that this is a power grab in order to think that it is authoritarian. when the TSA and DHS were created, it seemed to me that they would trend authoritarian simply because they had poorly defined missions and jurisdiction. in the absence of useful metrics with which to actually determine if policies are working, the only thing you have to go on is theatre and how the public perceives you doing your job. meaning, assert control over people in a visible, public way.
which is horseshit.
i am personally really irritated that i seem to be making common cause with troglodyte racists (who want to use this as an excuse to legitimize racial profiling) and glibertarians, but that doesnt mean that my concerns about the invasiveness are unfounded. and frankly, i’d be a lot more ok with it if there had been more testing of the backscatter devices, but it seems to me like there are a lot of embedded assumptions about the effect of the radiation that have not been fully explored in animal models. but this is all the more reason for me to yell and scream about it, so that i can shout down those who just want to glom onto any criticism of the obama administration, since it was bush and fucking chertoff that got us to this point.
ChrisNYC
@BR: I have no problem with this. I would be totally gung ho if the takeaway from these stories was, “Well, we need to draw a line somewhere and take what comes. No guarantees of perfect safety.” And that COULD be the takeaway (admittedly a hard sell) if the anyone had the brains to think it through and push it. But instead I saw lots of stuff about low education people getting thrills from frequent flier scrotums.
And, so, they lost the narrative and Drudge’s narrative won.
Stefan
Driving—costs less, more environmentally friendly, more relaxing, play the music I want at the volume I want, nobody touching my junk, nobody blowing me up because their junk didn’t get touched.
Hmmm…I need to get from NY to LA and back for a wedding and have four days to do it. Does this “driving” option work for me?
junebug
@Three-nineteen:
Dude, I don’t think you or anyone else would survive the line if you put some explosives up your ass.
And not to make light of this, but do you have personal experience putting bottle rockets up your ass?
I can’t even believe I am arguing this. Why haven’t we had ass bombers?
Stefan
Driving is great, except for those of us who have jobs and a not unlimited amount of time. If you’re traveling more than a few hundred miles from home, driving simply becomes time-prohibitive.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
When I heard Thom Hartman, whose opinion I agree with 90% of the time, rail against these ‘invasive’ techniques, I began think this country is losing its mind. I’ve been through the new scanners and don’t give a crap what fuzzy image of me exists an any TSA hard drive. I’ve been frisked on numerous occasions (once because I’d accidentally left a pair of small X-acto knives I use to sharpen drawing pencils in my bag), and it was no big deal. I need to fly for business, and these things never struck me as anything I should even be concerned about.
So when I heard Rush Limpballs pick this up as a topic this morning, I knew our side had been played.
BR
@ChrisNYC:
If Napolitano were to throw out the old playbook on how the TSA is supposed to operate, were to call in Bruce Schneier and others like him, craft a new strategy, and get rid of the security theater, you’d see a very positive response. As long as the new security measures worked, people would forget about it, and would be much happier at the airport to boot.
The funny thing (I’m weird, so I find it funny) is that air travel is going to go the way of the dodo bird within about five years – at least for us proles. Oil prices are going to drop (due to falling demand) and then skyrocket (due to falling supply due to being post peak oil) in the coming 2-5 years. Since most of the cost of air travel is the fuel, we’ll be priced out of it and will have to rely on buses, if that. (And even the California high speed rail project will only be barely started by then.)
junebug
@asiangrrlMN:
You don’t have to read Drudge to get led by the nose. I don’t read him either, but it looks like you took the hook.
Don’t you wonder that this whole nonsense and reason’s whole “good points” came when they did.
Have you looked into the explanations of all of the complaints? Hmmmm. Not on drudge. Not on your radar.
The Dangerman
@junebug:
I’m reasonably sure it’s been tried and shown to fail (other than causing personal injuries best left unimagined).
Old joke time for ass explosions:
Person 1: Rectum?
Person 2: Wrecked ’em? Damn near killed him.
Three-nineteen
@junebug: As I said, I’m no expert. And no, I have never put much of anything up my ass. I can’t imagine anyone actually putting explosives up there. Then again, I never imagined anyone would put explosives in their underwear. I have no idea what the terrorists will do next. I would bet the TSA doesn’t either.
ChrisNYC
@BR: I’m sure it is the case and I have heard stories from Indian-Americans about it. But, really, we can’t have it be policy. That would probably be a Constitutional violation (though there may be differences for airports and roads). That’s why DUI checkpoints have the rule of stopping random drivers — every fifth car, every tenth car, whatever — so the cops can’t pick people out that seem “suspicious.” That’s why the Arizona, “If they look Mexican I can ask for ID” law is a problem. Because looking Mexican isn’t probable cause for investigating an immigration violation.
BR
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
The right response is to call their bluff, not to say “the right is playing up this story, so we must be getting played.” We need to say, we also have problems with the TSA’s procedures and more importantly the machines, so let’s get rid of them. And watch the right break its neck trying to turn around and argue for why we need all of that, lest the security contracting corporations go hungry for multi-million dollar contracts.
asiangrrlMN
@junebug: No, I did not. I personally do not like being patted down, and I Googled what the images look like. So, I saw them with my own eyes. I didn’t like them. Just because you did not find it invasive does not mean someone else might not. And, the fact that I have a different point of view from you does not mean that Drudge has me by the hook.
I have thought much of the security measures have been crap since they started. And, as I pointed out, I am someone who gets randomly searched a lot more than is actually random.
We cannot stop terrorists attacks completely. Any idea that we can is an illusion. Personally, I would rather take the 1 in a million or whatever chance that there is a terrorist on my plane than have to give up increasing measures of body autonomy.
@BR: I like the way you think, and I like your reasoning.
DougJ
@junebug:
I’ll do a longer post on why these security measures concern me at some point. Maybe at some level my reaction is visceral, but there’s something about it that just rubs me the wrong way and I want good explanations for all of it and what it’s doing.
I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
I *do* respect Greenwald’s writing on these issues in fact, even though I think he’s kind of a nut in many ways and often don’t agree with him.
ChrisNYC
@BR: Napolitano, despite my comments here, is no hero to me. I think she’s a hardass, take no prisoners, throw away the key prosecutor through and through. And, generally, haha, I’m in favor of resisting state control. Really.
BR
@asiangrrlMN:
This.
And just to add to that, folks need to remember that terrorism is a tactic. Once we stop falling for the tactic – stop being irrationally fearful of the tactic – it won’t work any more. That’s a cultural shift that’s needed.
I hate to quote Bruce Schneier again, but he’s said so much on this and has been right – he points out that the definition of news is things that happen rarely. So he says don’t worry about what’s on the news – worry about the things that happen so often we don’t see them on the news, like car accidents and domestic violence.
Corner Stone
I’m not sure how it’s getting “played” to advocate for the 4th amendment and personal decency.
I’m not making common cause with some winger nutjob. I don’t want to privatize the role of the TSA. I want the DHS, TSA and WH to listen up and get this right.
Do the things that make us safer, not humiliate us and keep us in perpetual fear land.
The Dangerman
@asiangrrlMN:
I’d be all for a free market solution to this problem; have an airline be the “no security” airline and everyone takes their chances, known up front…
…as long as everyone signs off on having Families not being able to sue if there is an event…
…and, for that matter, if a plane from that airline came down, there wouldn’t even be an attempt to come clean up the wreckage.
Now, there is the problem of the cost to people on the ground, but maybe these routes would have to over open terrain or ocean.
Just thinking outside the box here…
junebug
@Three-nineteen: @Three-nineteen:
Really?
There is a big difference between the two.
MikeJ
I’ve often said Al Gore should entitle his next book “Leaping Off Twenty Story Buildings is Bad for You.” Would clean out a lot of the wingnuts.
Apparently, Rush Limbaugh should release a treatise on how yummy arsenic is. We could get some of the deadwood on our side (and probably some on his side too.)
asiangrrlMN
@BR: Exactly. All this bullshit for something that gets reported a few times a year. And yet, we can’t tackle our overflowing prisons or the fact that the local urban hospital has to turn folks away from the ER because of budget cuts. You and me–mutual admiration society.
ETA: I think the fact that back in 2000 and 2001 before 9/11, I used to fly fairly regularly and would be ‘randomly’ checked at least once a flight has to do with some of my skepticism. My dad once got inspected on every leg of a flight from Taiwan to MN (with a few stops on the way). I had to have my shoes examined even before the would-be shoe bomber made news. It didn’t make me feel safe back then, and this certainly does not make me feel safe now.
@Corner Stone: Amen. Especially to your last sentence.
Corner Stone
@BR:
I like Bruce but I always find this quote odd. My local news shows me the same house/apt fire, the same shootout at 3am outside a local bar, and the same 7-11 robbery every night as “news”.
MikeJ
@MikeJ: Of course I meant Rush should say arsenic *isn’t good for you*. FYWP won’t let me edit my brain fart.
jwb
@General Stuck: No, not an evil power grab; more like a reaction by the stupid. (It was stupid because the people making the decisions obviously didn’t think through the consequences of the policy; and you know they didn’t think through the consequences of the policy because they didn’t have immediate answers to obvious complaints and concerns.) And at this point, after having spent all of that money on this equipment, you can’t really expect the government to do anything but defend the stupid now, can you?
Yutsano
@MikeJ: I think either way works. They are pretty much the definition of sheeple.
BR
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, but I imagine they don’t talk about all the car accidents that happened that day nor the wives and children beaten or abused in town nor the cases of police throwing non-violent minorities in jail nor the many other more troubling and numerous things that are going on at the same time as the one daily fire and 7-11 robbery.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
@BR: I guess you and I can agree to disagree. I just don’t think these techniques need to be reworked.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are plenty of holes in the system — my point is that these techniques are not terribly invasive, so the hysteria around them is unfounded. And buying into the hysteria feeds into the craziness of the right’s meme that this is a “play toward dictatorial powers”, or whatever shit they’re peddling.
You’re right, I shouldn’t describe it as “being played”, because it makes it seem like they planned it. They didn’t. But they can exploit it.
ChrisNYC
@MattR: I’m with you. And that’s what Democrats are GOOD at — making government work. All those earnest wonks, crouched over their screens, looking at stats and doing pilot programs. But, hard to get to a rational policy when the left are the people pedaling bogus allegations of sexual assault. “Here, we’ll give the rapists better rules. I can make it so that you are 95% less likely to experience groping than last week,” is not going to cut it.
jwb
@Yutsano: Ha, so that’s how it ends, eh? Rush at some point misspeaks, the sheeple take him at his word, drink the tainted kool-aid, and voila he no longer has an audience.
Mnemosyne
@junebug:
My mother died at a young age due to aggressive breast cancer triggered by constant low-level exposure to x-rays (she was a dental hygenist).
Show me some academic papers proving that the x-ray technology poses absolutely no threat whatsoever to someone who may be sensitive to it or STFU about us all being whiners who just won’t follow orders.
Until then, I think I’ll be more likely to believe a group of scientists at UCSF about the potential hazards of these machines than some random commenter on a blog.
Yutsano
@jwb: If I sit around praying to the FSM for this to happen, is that going to tarnish my karma? I don’t have much left considering my occupation and all.
junebug
@DougJ:
And that’s where we part ways. I’ll still read — no worries — I’ll still check BJ second every morning and stay and refresh, but if you, of all people, start going GG progressive-libertarian, it will make me sad, just like the defense of cheating did today.
The libertarians aren’t the only answer out there. The profiling that drudge and wingers want isn’t either.
(I’m guessing you didn’t catch the rumor that women in hijabs were getting a pass . . . .)
I had always thought you were one step ahead in the wingnut talk. I had always admired you for that.
This time, I’m just sad.
BR
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
Ok. I guess my only comment is that the security measures themselves are the hysteria – they are the original hysterical reaction to a cartoon villain threat the media has conjured up with the help of elected fearmongers. If we were to apply the statistically equal level of security measures to driving, we’d mandate that cars not go faster than 25 mph and have bumpers on all sides.
Mnemosyne
@The Dangerman:
Yes, because the only possible alternative to x-ray body scanners and invasive pat-downs is to have no security at all. Because, what, all metal detectors have magically stopped working? Explosives-sniffing dogs have all been put to sleep? There are absolutely, positively no other options between nude photos and no security at all, so we’d all better shut up and get in line?
Yutsano
@junebug: HURT FEE-FEES!! HURT FEE-FEES IN THE STATIST MEDIA THREAD!! HURT FEE-FEES ALERT!!
BR
@junebug:
I think you’ve conflated two unrelated things here. As an example, I’m firmly against the TSA’s policies – not just the new ones, but the old ones as well – and I’m also firmly against cheating and think all the students who cheated should have been expelled. I don’t think this has to do with libertarianism either way.
Peter
WHOA, holy shit. The TSA is seriously out of control.
junebug
@Mnemosyne:
I’m sorry about your mom — even though I don’t know you and didn’t know her. I lost my father for different reasons and was left with a mother who I can only hope to live in this world without.
I know that very frequent fliers might want to escape that risk, but there are already ways in place for that, if I am not mistaken. And if you go to your dentist, you are exposing yourself to worse and if you work for a dentist you are in danger.
You saw what you did there. And it’s not applicable to most people, even the subset who fly.
junebug
@Peter:
Already debunked Peter.
Try harder.
celticdragonchick
@Three-nineteen:
Or…when the next terrorist doesn’t bother with hiding the bomb or the cut down AKS folding stock assault rifle and just butchers everybody right there at the security line…
Several hundred helpless people all jammed up at the security bottleneck. Security experts have been screaming about this for 15 years (since before Columbine) and we still have these huge fucking targets at the airports.
I’m shocked that an airport attack hasn’t happened yet, personally..and we know what will happen to the aviation industry and our civil rights after it does finally happen.
The Dangerman
@Mnemosyne:
An extreme position, indeed, and one that would almost surely be unworkable (as I violated my earlier position about insurance costs; then again, if all lawsuits were waived, etc. etc., maybe the insurance wouldn’t be prohibitive); however, since flying isn’t a constitutional right, if you highly value your privacy and if you don’t like x-rays or patdowns, don’t fly. Yes, that creates problems for those that HAVE to fly for work, but there are other jobs out there. No one HAS to fly…
junebug
@Yutsano:
what?
Someone asked you something?
Peter
@junebug: Debunked where? I just found this link, and a cursory google search reveals nothing.
General Stuck
@jwb:
Seems to me there is enough stupid to go around on this issue. I think the response is the most stupid, especially since polls tell us about 80 percent of folks don’t have a problem with the scanners, bloggers, pundits and the media in general are generating this freakout, by and large. Maybe the TSA was stupid for not realizing in the internet age, tempests in teapots can make much more noise than what is backed up by a majority of national opinion. The patdowns suck imo, the scanner response from a few people on the internet is overwrought, seems to me about a fuzzy image, personally unidentifiable viewed in the seclusion of a closed room.
The most stupid that I see is making this some kind of civil liberties show down from ideologues left and right and more pol paranoia of the largely imaginary big brother security state in America. And I suspect the imaging would spot abnormal undies, so to speak. I doubt it has anything to do with cost of the machines, and that they are just using them to say they are doing something.
Namby pamby liberals and wingnuts don’t want to get scanned, take the fucking bus.
That is what I think
junebug
@celticdragonchick:
Bad dreams?
junebug
@Peter:
Try harder, like I said already.
rageahol
@junebug:
yes, only very frequent fliers might want to escape a nonzero risk* that is imposed in response to a risk that is so small as to be negligible e.g. terrists!).
*also assumes that all these machines are calibrated properly on a regular basis, and that normal variations in output power, say, are not going to give you a significantly larger dose. but hey, we dont know, and i guess we’ll just have to trust the vendors. why would those machines cost so much if they werent effective and safe, anyway?
Mnemosyne
@junebug:
Yes, it’s called the invasive pat-down, where they grope your breasts and crotch. Not much of an alternative.
My dentist covers my entire torso with a lead shield before he x-rays my jaw. In fact, for every x-ray I’ve ever had, they have put a lead shield over my breasts and genitals. Quite a bit different than shooting x-rays directly at my unprotected chest.
Again, who am I supposed to believe, the scientists at UCSF who say they’re concerned about this x-ray exposure, or a random commenter on the internet who says it must be totally safe, so stop whining?
Martin
@eir:
Fatalities per mile has dropped 40% in the last 15 years and dropped almost 20% just from 2007 to 2009. Given that auto safety regulations are accelerating and are still largely in their infancy, I think that trend will continue in earnest.
And it’s not just built-in safety measures but also reliability (how frequent are tire blowouts now?) and roadside safety (breakaway poles, more reliable traffic controls, etc.).
Something that people miss in these analyses is the effect of leading the fatality statistics. Government tends to focus quite heavily on the top threats to the public. Once public health issues (polio, clean water, etc.) stopped leading the list, and then things like fighting the Viet Cong, accidents rose to the top. Teenagers are 3x more likely to be killed in an auto accident than any other means, and you need to go pretty deep into the age population before other things like cancer move up to the top. It’s far and away the most immediate threat to public health right now, and that’s why it’s getting so much more attention than it did in the past.
They won’t be eliminated, but I think we’ll be surprised at how rapidly the fatality rate continues to drop.
junebug
@General Stuck:
So you haven’t heard that Soros, via Chertoff, is using these machines to control us? You don’t listen to enough talk radio, my friend.
Stefan
Yes, that creates problems for those that HAVE to fly for work, but there are other jobs out there. No one HAS to fly…
No one HAS to drive. No one HAS to take the bus or the subway. No one HAS to visit their family on the other side of the country, or take a vacation. No one HAS to walk on the street…..
celticdragonchick
@junebug:
That is not the goal. AQ very nearly succeeded in assassinating the Saudi head of anti-terrorism with a “booty bomb”. The bomb was detonated by remote control, killing the bomber and slightly injuring the SAudi prince who was the target..
Darkrose
Last year, my wife and I did our East Coast Tour, from Sacramento to DC to Hartford and home. At each airport, we had to show photo ID. It wasn’t until the last leg of the trip, from Hartford to Sacramento, that a TSA agent asked my wife if she had another form of ID, because her driver’s license had expired in August. Note that we left DC on December 26, the day after the underwear bomber, and the TSA agent at Dulles didn’t notice the expired license.
This is why the scan/patdown thing annoys me. It’s security theater, nothing more and nothing less. The purpose is to make people feel safer and distract from the bottom line: if someone wants to hijack or blow up the fucking plane, and they don’t care if they survive it, then they’re going to hijack or blow up the fucking plane, and all the scanning and frisking in the world isn’t going to stop them.
rageahol
@junebug:
CONCERN TROLL IS CONCERNED.
celticdragonchick
@junebug:
That would be one of them.
The Dangerman
@Stefan:
All true; harsh, but all true.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
@BR: Well I can’t disagree about your point re: car driving. If the automobile were invented today, it’s potential as a mass-murder instrument would ban it outright. Fair enough.
But since we’re having a civil discussion here, I’m curious what your biggest objection to the scanners is.
I understand the privacy issue but I reject it (or at most I think we could come up with some legal process by which images are not allowed to be stored beyond x time, whatever). If it’s the radiation issue, I’d like some definitive study of how much worse the exposure is compared to what you experience during the actual flight. If it’s the ability of the scanner to do its job detecting foreign objects, is it worse than the earlier scanners we’ve accepted for years?
MattR
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
How about we put the burden on the government to demonstrate that it is safe (or minimally harmful) before they expose us to additional radiation instead?
celticdragonchick
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
I’m sure the parents of teenage female “cuties” or pre-pubescent children share in your lack of concern…
Last week, one of my flying partners (Captain with Skywest) was going through security at DEN with his 18 year daughter. As his daughter approached the detector, the TSO working the NoS said on his headset, “heads up, got a cutie for you.” He then confronted the TSA clerk with what he said and that neither of us are going through the NoS. The TSA clerk said you must have misunderstood me.
He said pat-down was pretty evasive, and his daughter felt uncomfortable.
He is taking it up with Skywest, with this behavior. Normally, crews there go through a different screening area, but since he was with his daughter, he got to see the TSA clerks at their finest in Denver.
Its stoiries like this, is why I will not go through the NoS (radiation/health issues) and even refuse the the pat-down thus (if it happens while on duty) canceling the flight due to a hostile work environment.
I hope this gets resolves soon!! Got to fly….no NoS checkpoints on this trip so don’t worry about a canceled flight from me!!
Stefan
All true; harsh, but all true.
Jesus Christ, no it’s not. I posted that as an example of complete and utter nonsense. Of course we have to do all those things because we’re social people with lives to live. Having each of us holing up in individual caves isn’t really a credible option.
junebug
@rageahol: @Mnemosyne:
you guys just read something that sounded scary to you and now you are all worked up. The poor TSA people are at more risk (just like your dental hygienist) than you are.
Looks like I have more fans to deal with.
Stefan
If it’s the radiation issue, I’d like some definitive study of how much worse the exposure is compared to what you experience during the actual flight.
I’d like a definitive study of that BEFORE they deploy them. I hardly think “prove to me this won’t kill you!” is the sure-fire argument winner you think it is…..
Corner Stone
I love it when people who never leave their apartment tell us all that there’s nothing wrong with the course the TSA is on.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
@MattR:
Not unreasonable at all.
rageahol
@junebug:
Yes, the TSA people are more at risk than travelers, all the more reason to get rid of the scanners, since they are a useless boondoggle that does not make us safer.
junebug
@celticdragonchick:
That was not a case of someone having a bomb up his ass.
I’d ask you to try harder, but it would be pointless.
General Stuck
The Dangerman
@Stefan:
Of course it is. There are rules to each of your examples; to drive, you have to have a license. To ride the bus, you have to agree not to play the boombox at ear splitting levels. To walk down the street, you have to be clothed. To get on an airplane, you have to be scanned. Distinctions without a difference…
junebug
@rageahol:
Dude, you must be new to this blog. DougJ was the best troll ever. If Cole hasn’t deleted the comments, you could learn something from DougJ.
He is (or was) awesome.
I’m hurt that there are these new people who don’t even know where Dougj comes from but think they can call me a troll.
Seriously, have you ever read any of DougJ’s wapo chat threads? Seriously?
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
@Stefan:
They claim their studies say it’s significantly less, but I’m not defending them, I’m not a scientist. So if there’s a dispute or objection, fine, let them prove that’s not the case. I’m not arguing with you on that.
Stefan
Of course it is. There are rules to each of your examples; to drive, you have to have a license. To ride the bus, you have to agree not to play the boombox at ear splitting levels. To walk down the street, you have to be clothed. To get on an airplane, you have to be scanned. Distinctions without a difference…
Oh, I see: you’re a tiresome hair-splitting pedant. Well, carry on, then.
BR
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
I guess I have many objections to the scanners:
1. They’re expensive, and the need for the expense has not been adequately justified – the one case that’s often cited was a flight that originated abroad, where the scanners won’t be used even now.
2. The UCSF letter linked to above gives good reason to wonder about the safety of the machines. Given how new they are, given how widespread they’re going to be, and given how long it takes for scientists to establish safety – especially regarding cancer – there’s no way the company or the TSA knows these things are safe. They’re just stating it as if it’s true – that doesn’t make it true. And if the probability of getting cancer from a machine is even slight, that slight probability is likely greater than the chance of being affected by a terrorist attack.
3. I’m not a lawyer, however this seems problematic to me from a 4th amendment perspective. Yes, I know that air travel is not a right. However, freedom of movement has been established as a right, and the TSA is a government agency.
4. I don’t like the attitude that you don’t have to worry if you have nothing to hide – that’s not how a free society is supposed to operate.
5. It sets a bad precedent for further security theater escalation, with all of the problems above taken a step further. (I don’t know what it’ll be but I’m sure there’s some security contractor itching to sell some new expensive piece of junk to protect us from some cartoon threat. That and some newly humiliating rule.)
Regarding the patdown/grope – since the TSA already admitted that the procedure is primarily used as a disincentive to avoid the machine, it’s clear that it’s not done that way for security reasons.
Anyway, I don’t know if I care all that much since I’ve been profiled for a long time, and since most of us won’t be flying at all due to its cost within five years, as I mentioned above in #80.
MattR
@General Stuck: Typical government spin.
(link)
(link)
Mnemosyne
@junebug:
No, what happened was that I saw the official picture that the TSA sent out that was supposed to reassure people and said, “Nope, not letting them take a picture of me like that.” Believe it or not, some of us were opposed to this even before Rush Limbaugh started screaming, and we’re not going to back down just because he finally caught up and is trying to take it away.
The concerns about the radiation came later when, you know, actual scientists started saying they were concerned, especially about calibration issues. If even the top hospitals in the US are giving some patients 8 times the recommended dose of radiation because they can’t be arsed to calibrate their CAT scanners correctly, why am I supposed to think that a TSA tech with far less training is going to be more diligent?
The Dangerman
@Stefan:
Perhaps, but I’m not the one comparing being touched by a TSA type to rape.
I’m a pretty private person (generally, though I’ve been to a few nude beaches in my time – after making sure my Mom wouldn’t be there too, of course), but I just don’t see the big deal about the pat downs. They can touch my junk; I could give a shit. They can simultaneously ask me to turn my head and cough; I’d consider it a 2 for 1.
So, extreme responses to extreme charges. Fair is fair….
Anne Laurie
@soonergrunt:
__
Ten thousand times, THIS. If “we” are going to throw millions of dollars at the moving-people-around issue, wouldn’t it be a far better use of resources to spend those millions on creating useful infrastructure and giving people construction jobs, instead of buying flavor-of-the-month Magic Eye gizmos and giving people “security” jobs?
handy
@Stefan:
Methinks you’re getting trolled: yes, there is no true distinction between dialing down your boombox to get on a bus and getting your junk groped to get on the plane. None at all.
jwb
@General Stuck: Listen to yourself, Stuck, those are gooper talking points from the Bush era.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
@celticdragonchick: Any inappropriate behavior should be reported, tried, and punished. But if I were to find one example of a police officer inappropriately touching in a pat-down (and I’m sure I could), would you then argue that cops should never be able to frisk someone anywhere, anytime?
General Stuck
@MattR:
Yea right, government conspiracy to radiate people for security theater by publishing doctored testing results. And they even managed to rope in Johns Hopkins physics lab. Fiendish. It’s a wonder some of you all manage to go outside without tinfoil hats.
rageahol
@General Stuck:
And if you’ll notice, the UCSF letter suggests that these dosimetry models may be inadequate. Assumptions were made about health effects from a particular dose based on models that may or may not be relevant to the type of screening being done.
it may, or may not be different in terms of health effects from getting your teeth or your bones x-rayed. we DO NOT KNOW whether we can retain the old models or not, because the research HAS NOT BEEN DONE.
BR
@Anne Laurie:
Agreed. The most important thing we could do as a country is improve our rail system – high speed for long distances and light rail / commuter rail / subways for metro areas. Maybe as I was saying in #85 not only should we call the right on this by saying the security machines aren’t needed, but also by saying “look, flying is this huge hassle, we should take lightning trains between cities.” (I think we need a new stupid name for them like lightning trains to satisfy the GOP need for stupid snazzy names. Oh, and to add to that, we need to imply that these lightning trains will be critical for national security to move troops rapidly, and that they will mean big bucks for some corporation or the other.)
General Stuck
@jwb:
Bullshit. what it is is reactionary nutballing to the Bush lawless era, you and others are engaging in. BDS seems to be a permanent condition for some liberals. Christ, all that is happening is a simple xray image before you board an airplane. That’s it, unless you are worried the rays can control your thoughts, or something.
And you can avoid it altogether by simply not flying.
The Dangerman
@handy:
Surely, a big difference, but basically the same; one doesn’t want to distract the driver (prevent accidents) and one wants to prevent planes being blown up (prevent accidents). So, one does what one has to do in each situation relative to the risk involved. Sadly, with airplanes, it’s been proven to be a massive risk (entirely ignoring lives lost, how much did 9/11 cost? quite the pile of cash, so, one does what one has to do).
Mnemosyne
@The Dangerman:
Hate to break it to you, but 9/11 wasn’t actually an accident.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist: Sorry, didn’t mean to say “frisk someone anywhere, anytime”, I meant to say “frisk someone under appropriate suspicion or with good cause”, or whatever. Not arguing for a police state :)
General Stuck
@rageahol:
Oh, I give up, jeebus. If you are afraid the government is lying, then don’t fly, I don’t care. This is about the stupidest paranoid freakout I’ve ever seen. I expect this shit from the right wingers, but not on Balloon Juice?, of all places. disappointing.
rageahol
@The Dangerman:
with or without the two endless wars?
MattR
@General Stuck: Geez. None of that at all. Did you actually read the quotes provided? All the Hopkins physics lab did was confirm the output matched the specs. What does that actually prove about whether or not it is safe for human use? I’ll take the word of the guy who runs the x-ray lab in the biophysics department. He probably has a better understanding of its effects on living things.
As another example of the spin from the government, the exposure from these scanners is different than from flying in an airplane. In the latter, your entire body is exposed while in the former it is limited to (and focused on) the skin. Scientists have a pretty good understanding of the effects of full body exposure, but they are not so sure about the skin deep type which is why they are voicing caution.
Ailuridae
@Anne Laurie:
The only problem with the “more high speed rail” answer is that it ignores the fact that once a terrorist in the US blows up a train as it pulls into a major urban area the TSA will be at Union Station as well.
The Dangerman
@BR:
Absolutely agreed; however, a story about the California proposal outlines the problems.
The CA proposal is to send trains up the Central Valley; through Visalia (south of Fresno). The congressperson there is Devin Nunes, a Republican (and I’ve met the man, in a meeting of 3 or 4 people, so I got a read on him; he’s an idiot).
Anyway, even though his area is an economic shithole of the highest order and high speed rail would be like a Gift from the Heavens for the people there, he’s against it. For the same reasons as basically every other Republican.
Stupid, stupid, stupid…
The Dangerman
@rageahol:
Well, we are going to Iraq with or without 9/11; so, I’d just count Aghanistan as the “marginal cost” war.
Risks affiliated with air travel dictate reasonable precautions is all I’m saying….
Stefan
The only problem with the “more high speed rail” answer is that it ignores the fact that once a terrorist in the US blows up a train as it pulls into a major urban area the TSA will be at Union Station as well.
Yes, but you can’t prevent a train being blow up by searching the passengers — since of course trains run on rails over hundreds of miles. To blow up a train you don’t even have to get on it, you just have to sabotage the rails in some remote spot.
The Dangerman
@Mnemosyne:
Saying it was an inside job? Innnnnnnnnnteresting….
Suffern Ace
@Ailuridae: Criminies. Then why don’t we just not move away from home and live within walking distance of where we grew up. Yes, the TSA might be there. We’re back at 2001 again when everyone is supposed to be afraid to go to the mall…
(If that was snark, I apologize.)
MattR
@Stefan: You make good points, but that doesn’t mean that the goverment won’t irrationally overreact.
BR
@Ailuridae:
Nah, I don’t buy it. The damage with a train is very localized and not visually frightening in the same way with planes. The media won’t be able to make a big deal out of it. Also, by the time we even get any high-speed rail systems going we’re going to be in the thick of an oil crisis so severe and permanent that we’re going to be fucked by much bigger problems than some cartoon terror threats.
Ailuridae
@Stefan:
The concern is someone getting on the Acela and detonating a large bomb under Penn Station.
Mnemosyne
@The Dangerman:
Sorry, I didn’t realize that 19 guys from al-Qaeda boarded four airliners and accidentally took them over.
That must have been a big “whoops!” moment when they crashed into the World Trade Center, seeing as they did it accidentally and all.
rageahol
@General Stuck:
i never, ever said that it was a deliberate misrepresentation — a lie.
i said that the scientific models we employed to gauge the potential health risks of the machines may or may not be useful in this context.
a lie requires deliberate misrepresentation or untruth.
what i have been saying is more akin to nontruth.
we do not know what the health risks are, nor do we know how closely this particular case tracks what we know about the health risks from other radiation exposure.
because. it. has. not. been. studied.
i looked. the only paper i could find that treats this subject directly was one published on november 9 of this year. and it’s more of a physics paper than a biology paper, meaning it relies on existing (also meaning well-worn and accurate within certain contexts) models of radiation exposure and its health effects.
The Dangerman
@Mnemosyne:
Ah, I see now, you took umbrage at my loose use of the word “accident”; ok, fair enough, but the fundamental point remains, it’s a safety issue.
General Stuck
@MattR:
Everything I’ve read says that it is a very low xray beam that goes no further than the skin surface, which makes sense as compared to full body invasive beams creating higher overall doses.
If there is some anomalous effect from just the skin deep backscatter, then it would defy basic logic of the ill effects known from xray exposure in general. It is possible that such a thing exists, but seems quite unlikely.
Ailuridae
@Suffern Ace:
I’m not making an argument for the “police state”; I am just pointing out that anyone who believes the answer to what they perceive as TSA overreach at airports is HSR is not thinking this through.
There are pretty simple solutions to this as it relates to planes but it involves admitting that an airborne plane for all practical purposes is a missile. And that isn’t a reality that most Americans are comfortable dealing with.
BR
@General Stuck:
The UCSF doctors and scientists as linked above make a clear case for why this needs to be studied far more than it has been before putting it into use. There’s a reason radiation / cancer studies take years, and these machines haven’t gone through that level of testing. The way it’s supposed to work is the companies are supposed to show they’re safe, not meet some bare minimum level of testing and then require the public to show to them that they’re not safe.
jwb
@General Stuck: You’re not hearing yourself. You’ve also not been listening. I have said nothing about the scanners except to suggest that they are more theater than effective law enforcement (in this respect they are on par with most of airport security) and that the flat-footed response by the government suggests that the decision on how and why to deploy these machines was not carefully made, which undermines my confidence in the decision even more.
Mnemosyne
@The Dangerman:
What do you think would keep us safer: a bored employee sitting at a console watching x-ray pictures or a highly-trained officer with an explosives-sniffing dog patrolling the security line while people wait to go through the metal detector?
I would rather have the highly-trained personnel with the proven, reliable technology (aka the dog) making sure the airport is secure than a minimum-wage employee operating a machine s/he barely understands.
But the machine is shiny! And high-tech! And I’m sure it has a sound that goes “bing!” so it must be far superior to mere human efforts.
BR
@Mnemosyne:
This. I think standard metal detectors, no stupid shoe rules and liquid rules and so on, and dogs are the way to go. Lines would go fast and dogs would catch what needs to be caught.
MattR
@General Stuck: Because it is focused skin deep, the fear is that the exposure is actually greater than the equivalent amount of penetrating x-ray (while the government claims of safety assume the skin deep exposure is similar to the penetrating variety). The government may end up being completely right, but I think there is enough of a question that I would like to see it studied before I put my body through it.
@Ailuridae:
Personally, I don’t think you will ever be able to stop someone from blowing up a plane, but I think it would be relatively simple to take steps that prevent a terrorist from taking over the cockpit and using the plane as a missle.
The Dangerman
@Mnemosyne:
Best guesstimate? Highly trained officer with a highly trained dog.
Next best guesstimate? That would be prohibitively expensive.
Machines are not only shiny, they are cheap. Comparatively.
BR
@The Dangerman:
Seriously? The officer and dog must cost less than the initial cost / operating cost / maintenance cost of the machine, not to mention all the extra TSA agents now needed to do unnecessary screenings.
General Stuck
@jwb:
You accused me of using Bush era talking points for simply stating the facts about what this issue is about. A simple low level xray creating a fuzzy image only seen in a back room. That has been tested as safe by multiple organizations in and out of the government.
A few people are turning this simple action into the mother of all government intrusions and pol football for all sorts of reasons assumed for differing nefarious motives.
Yours happens to be a notion that the TSA was flat footed at the outrage from a small number of people with computers and an internet connection.
I don’t blame them for not expecting this craziness. I am surprised by it as well.
Ailuridae
@MattR:
Yep. I sense most Americans are very uncomfortable with those measures even after 9/11, though.
The Dangerman
@BR:
Yeah, seriously; you think the Airlines wouldn’t want a solution that is cheaper AND more effective? I think there is little doubt it would be more effective, so why wasn’t it put in place? Same reason you can check in at those spiffy new ereaders in the terminals; machines are cheaper than people.
The Dangerman
Even worse; you think people are afraid of being touched by a TSA person? Just watch what happens to those people that are tremendously afraid of dogs.
BR
@The Dangerman:
The airlines don’t directly pay for the security equipment – we do, and only a small part is borne by the airlines, and that too indirectly.
The makers of the scanner equipment have an incentive to sell us on expensive crap equipment and the TSA has an incentive to buy it to make it look like they’re doing something by employing the latest fancy gadgetry.
Dogs are just too low-tech.
Also, the fear of dogs in airports issue isn’t really a big deal – they already have dogs in some airports some of the time, so people who fear dogs are already having to encounter them. Oh, that and on the average sidewalk walking around town in pretty much any town in the country. That and the dogs won’t be groping anyone anytime soon.
Mnemosyne
@The Dangerman:
The government is spending about $200 million on these machines, and another $220 million on personnel costs to run them. That would pay for a whole lot of dogs and trained personnel, even if you include health benefits.
ChrisNYC
@Corner Stone: Oh fuck off. As a frequent flier, I’m guessing that business travelers are not going to be the ones engaging in the protest tomorrow, because they have to get to whatever meeting or conference or other dreaded thing for their job. I pity the poor schlub who’s going to miss his flight tomorrow because he had the misfortune to be behind some wingnut with an axe to grind and his Iphone recording.
rageahol
@General Stuck:
you sure are using a lot of vague, mitigating/minimizing language there for someone who seems to not have any idea what they’re talking about.
troll on, brother.
Joseph Nobles
Hey, folks, North Korea has been attacking a South Korean island for the last 20 minutes or so.
TooManyJens
@Mnemosyne: Yes, but more of that money would be going to workers and less to shareholders and executives of companies that make expensive equipment.
MattR
@General Stuck:
Have we ever been shown the actual images that the TSA agents see? From what I have read, all the examples provided are the result of the machine settings (ue. contrast, brightness) being set to lower values for the purposes of those images.
What out of government organization has tested this as safe?
@General Stuck: G’night.
General Stuck
I’m going to bed. No hard feelings I hope over this discussion. I am as always, an asshole that gets cranky sometimes too easily. Apologies for any insults as I respect all of the several folks parried with in this thread. later alligators.
BR
@TooManyJens:
Ding ding ding ding. This.
The Dangerman
@Mnemosyne:
Same answer as previously; if it was cheaper, they would have done it.
Mnemosyne
@Joseph Nobles:
Well, that’s going to be interesting to wake up to tomorrow morning. Assuming I’ll be able to sleep.
General Stuck
@rageahol:
And you do know what you are talking about?
MattR
@The Dangerman: Michael Chertoff was not in a position to make money off of highly trained officers and dogs.
Mnemosyne
@The Dangerman:
Wow. You’ve never worked for a corporation, have you? They don’t care about actual costs. They care about “headcount.” They’ll pay twice as much in overtime costs so they don’t have to increase their headcount.
Employees are considered a liability these days, and companies try to get rid of as many of them as possible no matter what the cost is to the company.
ETA: It’s easier to justify spending on machines than on people even if using people would be cheaper.
The Dangerman
@MattR:
If Chertoff lobbied for his personal gain, arrest him; this is an easy accusation to make, but lets back it up with some facts.
Oh, and today, I checked out of Lowe’s and Walmart in a self checkout lane. Those machines had to be expensive; why not just pay some poor schlub minimum wage to check me out? Because machines are cheaper.
Mnemosyne
@The Dangerman:
No, a machine has fixed costs. It doesn’t need overtime pay or vacation time.
They’re still more expensive than people, but it’s easier to predict what the costs are, so companies prefer them.
The Dangerman
@Mnemosyne:
I’m sorry, that’s insane….
…and I’ve worked in some pretty big organizations. Boeing, State of California, etc.
Joseph Nobles
@Mnemosyne: The Washington Post email I just got gave it the “South Korea says” spin to it, so nothing has been directly confirmed as of yet. Keep your fingers crossed.
The Dangerman
@Mnemosyne:
So, we are only considering fixed costs now and not variable costs? Now, I think you’re trolling me.
MattR
@The Dangerman: I am sure that Chertoff did nothing illegal. But it is hard to believe that the fact that Rapiscan gave business to Chertoff’s company was completely unrelated to the business that Rapiscan got from the US government as a result of decisions that Chertoff made.
Suffern Ace
@Joseph Nobles: Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.
Mnemosyne
@The Dangerman:
You must not have worked there recently. It is insane to cut staff and then insist on 30% growth year over year while reducing overtime costs, and yet these companies do it. My husband works for one.
Not to mention that it’s much easier to get money from investors if you can call it a capital investment (aka a machine) rather than increasing the workforce (aka more people). Wall Street hates workers, which is why announcing layoffs is a guaranteed way to boost your stock.
The Dangerman
@MattR:
Which, if it influenced the expenditure, would be illegal.
The Dangerman
@Mnemosyne:
This is nonsense; sorry.
Approaching Midnight my time, so I bid you adieu.
Mnemosyne
@The Dangerman:
No, I’m pointing out that companies would rather take the fixed cost of a machine over the variable cost of an employee even if the employee is cheaper.
It’s not always simply about the bottom line and dollars and cents. If it were, CEOs wouldn’t be making millions of dollars in bonuses every year while postponing capital improvements to the company.
MattR
@The Dangerman: Let me rephrase. I am sure that Chertoff did nothing that could ever be proven to be illegal.
@Mnemosyne:
Republican governments do this too.
rageahol
@General Stuck:
Yes. I’ll send you my CV if you’re that terribly interested. What’s most important is that i know how to search pubmed, and can usually download the articles through my graduate institution. which i then can read and ask questions about.
you, on the other hand, seem to have dismissed all the criticisms out of hand, and resorted to the very same straw man/ad hominem tactics that you appear to implicitly accuse republicans of using. it seems like a vaguely broderesque false-balance tactic.
Judas Escargot
Never know who might be hiding a stolen PS3 beneath their testicles.
Mnemosyne
@ The Dangerman:
Really?
Layoffs boost ADC’s stock
Sony layoffs boost stock; fundamentals remain weak
and, of course:
CEOs lay off thousands, rake in millions
You sure don’t seem to know much about the stock market or how companies do business these days.
Mnemosyne
Argh. Stupid moderation. But anyone who’s unaware that companies’ stock prices go up when they announce layoffs hasn’t been paying attention. It’s an extremely well-known phenomenon, to the point that there were stories in 2009 asking why it wasn’t working anymore.
ETA:
MattR
God I hate the media. I see this article in the USA Today about how the 2006 congressional report on climate change that Rep Barton has used as a cudgel was largely plagiarized. In the third paragraph they are sure to note:
They explain further in the 6th paragraph that:
Then, all the way down in the 18th paragraph, they finally mention:
Kyle
@BR:
This. I think standard metal detectors, no stupid shoe rules and liquid rules and so on, and dogs are the way to go. Lines would go fast and dogs would catch what needs to be caught.
I would feel better about security measures if they actually developed them by consulting with experts in countries that have actually faced active and serious security threats for decades — Israel, UK, France, Spain, etc. Not pants-pissing, panicky politically-driven stupidity like removing shoes, dumping confiscated liquids into a big trash can by the security line (gee, that’ll neutralize any liquid explosives). But that would mean admitting that Murka isn’t the greatest and bravest country in the world that has nothin’ to learn from soshulist furriners.
And it would help if the security measures were implemented by cool, well-trained staff who treat travelers with professionalism, instead of the equivalent of unaccountable, hotheaded, bullying mall cops shouting at people. Think bank tellers – high security environment, tightly-defined procedures, but they manage to not make you feel like a criminal every time you set foot in the building.
MikeJ
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, it was one of my complaints about that awful Marketplace radio show. Lead off with a story of massive layoffs and and segue into “We’re in the Money” to announce the market moved up.
Peter
@BR: I prefer bomb-sniffing bees myself, but that’s just because I love the idea of detecting terrorists with a bee in a box.
eco2geek
BoingBoing’s been posting a lot about the TSA’s new policies, hammering them hard. Most of their readers aren’t exactly conservative types, nor are the blog’s proprietors. The idea that the outrage over the choice between the porn machine (the scanner) and the grope (pat-down) was manufactured by the right in order to embarrass the Democrats/Obama is a new one on me.
Personally, as a “drag me kicking and screaming” ex-smoker, I’m not terribly concerned about the radiation. I think there’s a line they’ve crossed. I shouldn’t have to submit to someone looking at my naked body or have someone touching my junk in order to fly. If they don’t have a warrant or I’m not under arrest, then it’s an unacceptable invasion of privacy.
In addition, when the people who are doing the screening have various degrees of training, apply the screening to different people in different ways, and when certain people don’t have to go through the screening at all (like Boehner), then it’s just “security theater.”
eco2geek
In breaking news, the North Koreans sure seem like they’re trying to start another war with South Korea.
Craziness.
Triassic Sands
@Mnemosyne:
No time to read the previous 220+ comments, so if this has already been said…sorry.
I’ve heard an “expert” discuss the scanning machines and according to him there are two types — one uses x-rays, the other microwave technology. X-rays carry a small, but real risk of cancer — especially for people flying scores or even hundreds of times a year. Apparently, the microwave machines carry no risk at all (we’ve heard that before), but if their risk is lower than that of a scanner using x-rays, why would we ever use x-ray scanners? The images and information are supposed to be comparable for both types. He said that x-ray machines outnumber microwaves by a ratio of 60-40 and there is no practical way to discover which you are exposed to.
This is a health issue, not one of propriety, which, honestly I find nearly irrelevant. When the hell are we going to grow up? Is there anyone who would honestly say they would prefer to die in a terrorist attack rather than have their “image” viewed by an anonymous TSA employee.
On the other hand, there could be a small, but real health issue and if choosing one type of scanner over another removes or lessens that risk then I see no reason to use the potentially more dangerous scanners.
This also does not deal with privacy issues.
Martin
@The Dangerman: Actually, the self-checkout doesn’t necessarily save money. It turns out consumers are stupider than they had planned, the people most likely to use them are also people more likely to use coupons and want to skip the bagging step, which requires a person to come in and fix the operation. And the checkouts are easier to game, so theft goes up with them.
So, it’s marginal. Some consumers like them though – but the secondary costs and benefits tend to overpower the primary – the cost of the machine vs. the cost of the checker.
Maybe self-checkout v 2.0 will be a clearer winner.
MikeJ
@Triassic Sands:
Over smart ass reply redacted.
If some people feel forced nudity is their line, that seems perfectly reasonable to me. You seem to think anything short of death is an ok price for getting on an airplane. And that’s with no proof that the scanners would do any good anyway.
And while I would love to stay and argue this all night, I have to go pick up a friend who’s been sitting on a bus on I-5 since 4:30 this afternoon.
boatboy_srq
I can’t help thinking that this entire brouhaha over both the screening methods and the entirely forgettable press coverage misses the larger point. The TSA processes now in place are just one more component in the Surveillance State created over the last decade, yet it’s the first piece to receive loud condemnation – and that from the people who generally liked the rest of the process.
Read our private emails? Go ahead.
Snoop on our other correspondence? Fine.
Paw through our financial records and spending habits looking for terrorist dollars? Feel free.
… Yet the moment our bodies become part of the picture, everyone squeals.
Folks, this is what we get for being too scared to step out our doors without a go-ahead from Homeland Security. It’s a natural progression from the earlier invasions of privacy and guilty-until-proven-innocent tactics of the security state. If this were really a problem we should have made more noise when the Patriot Act was first passed: now it’s too late. I’m hardly a fan of either the scanners or “gate rape” as jurassicpork so colourfully put it, but as for making noise about it now, that ship sailed a long time ago. If secure flying were truly the important thing, we should be required to have our baggage sent off separately and all fly naked: since there’s still too much Puritan embedded in the American psyche we’ll just have to make do with the system we have.
For what it’s worth, I did quite a bit of flying between 11 September ’01 and the date the TSA took over airport screening, during which time the private sector was still handling security at the airports. I can tell you for a fact that the private firms were rude, hostile, and generally impossible to deal with. Of about eight flights, I was put through the enhanced screening of the day at each main checkpoint, hauled out of line at every gate for further screening, and generally treated like a pariah, and I’m as blond-blue-eyed white-bread America as they come; all that stopped the day the TSA took over. I cannot tell you what a relief it was to have an outfit with at least some sort of standard running the checkpoints instead of those for-hire whackjobs. Anyone who thinks that private enterprise can somehow handle this duty better than the TSA is in for a very rude awakening if airport security gets handed back to the contractors.
El Cid
@Triassic Sands: In this particular case, the general fear that these backscatter X-ray machines pose a radiation risk in their normal operation is comparatively unfounded.
In fairness, people are completely unaware of how much radiation we are exposed to on a daily basis from the natural environment. We are fortunate that there are a variety of mechanisms which reduce the amount of dangerous radiation making it through our atmosphere to the troposphere, like the Earth’s magnetic fields and the atmosphere itself, but plenty still gets through.
However, there is always the possibility that some machine is defective or broken and more radiation is passed through.
Michael
@Three-nineteen:
Some people pay extra for that.
kay
@celticdragonchick:
You post this on every TSA thread, so I’m interested. Do you always take a second-hand unattributed statement posted on an internet board at face value, swallow it whole, and then use it to smear a whole group of workers?
I looked for some verification that this happened, and I can’t find any. If it’s out there, I’d love to see it, because it has all the markers of sketchy testimony.
The speaker didn’t see it but heard about it, the person who allegedly suffered the harm is high-prestige (and therefore credible) – he’s a Captain!-and the victim is sympathetic (his teenage daughter). There’s a nice sentimental backstory there, too, the protective father.
Does this Captain have a name? Because I would think the TSA worker should be disciplined, and there’s a readily available process for that.
I’m funny like that. I like to see the complaint before I convict.
Annelid Gustator
@El Cid: Sure, now prove to me they’re bringing NIST-traceable rad meters in to check each backscatter twice per month like the manual undoubtedly says.
Annelid Gustator
@Kyle:
Don’t do much banking in the hood, eh?
kay
@celticdragonchick:
Does it bother you at all that the story about the little boy who had his shirt forcibly removed by Big Sis and her minions wasn’t true?
Does it matter?
The pedophile charge sticks regardless of the facts, amirite? Hell, yeah!
Ron
@ChrisNYC: Who gives a shit who “created” it? If something it’s wrong whether or not the right feels that way. It’s nothing new that on many civil liberties and privacy issues that there is agreement between those on the left and libertarians. What seems to be happening crosses lines as far as I’m concerned. On the other hand, as I’ve said elsewhere, it’s pretty sad that it took this to get people upset. We’ve illegally wiretapped and tortured in the name of security and nobody other than the DFH’s let out a peep. But now “real ‘merkans” are getting their privacy invaded and it’s a big deal.
Jane2
@ChrisNYC: I disagree that this was a Drudge-manufactured outrage. The true outrage is that the administration continues to implement security theater (and in this case, the money link between scanner companies, lobbyists, and policy is too clear to ignore). That same administration continues to lag behind on scanning cargo while making my shampoo, electronic devices, shoes, jacket, bottled water, cranberry sauce, nail clippers, and bra underwire potential weapons of airplane destruction.
Annelid Gustator
@Stefan: Moreover, air travel is less bad on a per passenger mile basis (here), so at the margin you shouldn’t feel all that good about driving vs. flying. If you have some ability to structurally change people’s choices about air travel, please do it, though: “better” is thin gruel.
Stefan
The concern is someone getting on the Acela and detonating a large bomb under Penn Station.
Why can’t someone just get on the 2/3 subway line and detonate a large bomb under Penn Station? Why can’t someone just carry a large bomb inside a wheeled suitcase and walk into Penn Station and set it off? Try to stop those attacks…..
soonergrunt
@Three-nineteen: And your point is correct, Sir. And yeah, one has a much higher chance of being struck by lightening than killed by a terrorist. in any venue.
Like I said, though, life is full of trade-offs, but I should’ve added to that statement the clause: but only for those who can afford it. Most people can’t. If they can even afford a vacation at all, it’s driving all the way. If they have a job where they travel for business, they have those special lines.
Corner Stone
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
It’s interesting you would use the police officer analogy. Is someone suspected of doing something wrong by purchasing an airline ticket?
Corner Stone
@ChrisNYC: I travel for business as well. And I canceled a trip to CHI first week of Dec due to these issues. I’m going to take a while longer and think through my options, if any.
And almost all of my colleagues fly as much or more than I do. After a few very informal chats they seem to be running about 50/50 on “no big deal yet” vs “I can’t stand the thought of it”.
So I wouldn’t rule out protests by frequent fliers or business travelers.
Corner Stone
@rageahol:
Sorry to see you ran into BJ’s most prominent projectionist. His SOP is to vehemently accuse others of what he himself is doing.
kay
@Corner Stone:
Are you suspected of doing something wrong when you enter a retail store?
Because they’re filming your every move, and you’re walking through an electronic alarm system on the way out. And that’s to protect against the pressing public safety issue of….shoplifting. A minor property crime. They then use the collected tapes to convict. Right to the state, they go. They start with your entry, and build the case from there.
Everybody gets filmed, and everybody walks through the loss prevention alarm.
Corner Stone
@kay: How is that even remotely relevant?
soonergrunt
@eir:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
YEAR fatalities US Population % of US Pop
2006 42,642 299,398,484 0.000142426
2007 41,059 301,139,947 0.000137840
2008 37,261 303,824,640 0.000122640
2009 33,808 306,700,000 0.000110737
This is a little worse than the probability of being struck by lightening:
http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/probability.html
1 : 280,000 ~ 0.00000357
The trend is downward and a decent clip, so yeah, within 20 years, it will be very rare, or more accurately, even more rare than it is now.
kay
@Corner Stone:
Because you drew a connection with the commenter relying on a police officer example, and asked “are you suspected of doing something wrong when you enter an airport?”
You object to what you’re stating as a presumption of criminality in an airport, but not in a large retail establishment. Is it the severity or infrequency of the crime that matters (intent to do physical harm rather than intent to shoplift), then, and not the presumption?
Because every large retail establishment is treating you like a shoplifter. You’re walking through an electronic monitor and subject to surveilence.
General Stuck
@rageahol:
I didn’t dismiss all criticism out of hand, I offered fucking evidence from studies performed and you offered a letter from a scientist who has more questions, and seems from reading that letter, to have more political concerns than scientific. As does most of your commentary on this thread.
And you can shove your snooty CV up corner stones fat stupid ass.
@rageahol:
You should be, cause that is exactly what you’re doing.
How Broderesque is that?
Corner Stone
@kay:
So Target has the right to touch me before I buy my DVD? Or if I peek my head in and see the cameras and then try to leave they can fine me $11,000?
It’s idiotic to say that because I shop at a place with cameras that I can’t argue against x-ray imaging devices. Or somehow equate a pat down to shopping where cameras are.
As usual you are way off your rocker.
kay
@Corner Stone:
As usual, when challenged, you dodge and drop your own argument.
You object to the perceived presumption of criminality in airports, but not in Wal Mart.
You raised it. Deal with it.
Corner Stone
@kay: God in Heaven you are obtuse.
I object to being physically touched just because I have purchased an airline ticket. Airports for decades have had security features and yes, security cameras! Who knew!?
It’s blatantly stupid to say that walking into a Target is in any way equivalent to the loss of rights we are forced to endure when we walk into an airport secure zone today.
Corner Stone
To return to the police officer analogy that HE PennyPacker raised earlier, before kay stupidly tried to mutate it into an argument involving retail stores for some inane reason.
A police office must have a reason or suspicion before he can pat you down. He can’t just randomly pull you out of a line at a cafeteria and frisk you.
The TSA is pulling random people out of a normal line and patting them down.
kay
@Corner Stone:
Okay. But, that wasn’t what you argued.
This is what you argued:
I can see why you want to drop it.
MattR
@kay: What was the context for Corner Stone’s statement? It had to do with allowing police officers to pat you down. Why would they pat you down? Because you are suspected of doing something wrong. You have not done that when you buy an airplane ticket so the comparison of police pat downs to airport pat downs is not a good one.
Corner Stone
@kay: I don’t care to drop anything. As usual your reasoning and logic (if it may be called that) is faulty to the extreme. Your reading comprehension is also FAIL level.
Please continue trying to tell us how going to Target is the same thing as going to the airport.
Jenavir
“Basically the same”? Sure, if you ignore the invasive touching, the power dynamic, and the humiliation, why, yes, having your genitalia groped is the same as turning your boombox down! You’re leaping over important distinctions to prove that invasive groping is “basically the same” as turning your boombox down. It’s analytically vacuous, and shows you shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Your assessment of risk is just as bad. You don’t show that the risk of airplanes blowing up is higher without these scanners; you also don’t show why, even if it is higher, we should value that difference in risk more than we value our freedom from sexual assault. Which brings me to your empty-headed minimization of that issue:
Having your genitalia groped without consent is sexual assault. That’s the definition. Your argument is that you’re “consenting” by getting onto a plane; you’re apparently either too dense or too unwilling to see that the argument is that this is an insufficiently high standard for consent.
Good for you! But I see the big deal. You’re not the center of the universe. Some men don’t think women should object to sexual harassment, because they’d love it if Angelina Jolie harassed them. I couldn’t care less what they think.
As a side note, “profiling” isn’t worse than sexually assaulting everyone. It’s very weird that people on this thread are acceptign this.
Jenavir
To add to the vacuity of this concept of risk: people die in bus crashes far more commonly than in terrorist attacks, which are comparatively rare. So no, it’s not a “massive” risk. It’s a small risk of a severe consequence.
Jenavir
Touched? No–nobody’s complaining about being “touched.” That’s what the TSA did before, without any uproar. People are complaining about being groped or being seen naked.