Author Topic: TSA check  (Read 8004 times)

Offline Mike

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TSA check
« on: January 26, 2010, 05:58:07 PM »
Let's hear some opinions on this one guys. Political views invited as well.

I heard that the other day some drunk guy tried to open one of the doors in flight on the way to LAS which got the flight diverted to DEN.
Has the world gone mad?
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Offline spacer

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2010, 06:19:16 PM »
Nothing, really, other than I don't fly commercially anymore. TSA has caused more fear and grief than they've claimed to
remedy, especially given their utter failure to succeed even in their own sugar-coated and softball attempts at self-testing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Administration
Quote
A report on undercover operations conducted in October 2006 at Newark Liberty International Airport was leaked to the press. The screeners had failed 20 of 22 undercover security tests, missing numerous guns and bombs. The Government Accountability Office had previously pointed to repeated covert test failures by TSA personnel.[54][55] Revealing the results of covert tests is against TSA policy, and the agency responded by initiating an internal probe to discover the source of the leak.[56]

So... they're more worried about their test results getting out than the fact that they're full of utter FAIL!
I was working at Adams Field during a ramp-up of TSA, and it turned out that a majority wouldn't have passed a background check. They just needed goons on the floor, and to heck with standards.

After I moved to a smaller airport, they started poking their noses in there, too. After all, general aviation is a proven hotbed of terrorist activity.  ::thinking:: ::)
Heck, it probably won't matter much here, in the long run anyway. The airport is being run by a bunch of non-flying political appointees, and an airport manager (ex-prison guard) who knows nothing about airplanes or airports. I don't see it ending well... but in the end, isn't the same problem? Bureaucratic takeovers of stuff the bureaucrats don't understand, and don't care to understand, so long as they get their share of authori-TAH.

/rant

Offline Oddball

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #2 on: January 26, 2010, 08:36:02 PM »
Over here I think some parent groups are worried that peadophiles could be put in charge of the new scanners. been some stuff about it on the news.
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Offline Rooster Cruiser

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #3 on: January 26, 2010, 08:52:46 PM »
Ask and ye shall receive, Mike.   ;D  Here goes...



I just LOVE the Mfg name on the scanning machine, "Bare Butt Technologies"!!!   ::rofl:: ::rofl:: ::rofl:: ::rofl:: ::rofl::

Two things come to mind:

1)  Bomb-sniffing dogs are much more effective than full-body scanning machines.  They are also cheaper to breed and train (trainers included).  So why aren't they used?  Because of Political Correctness!    ::complaining: ::rambo:: ::banghead::  Dogs are considered unclean by arabs (I am uncertain if all muslims consider them unclean) so I guess they would be offended if a dog started sniffing at their bodies once the dog detects that bomb material on them.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  Dogs can't vote, and they don't pay taxes or hire lobbyists.   ::complaining:

2)  TSA is a prime example of our Government wasting taxpayer money to give the "appearance" of actually doing something.  The key phrase is "Window Dressing."  It is nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction.  There is nothing proactive about it.  Why the appearance?  Because the idea of "protecting the public" is nothing more than an illusion!  We all know that here.

I get so annoyed everytime I hear some Talking Head on TV yelling about "Why can't the government protect us?"  I even hear that sorry catchphrase on Fox News.  Safety is something we ALL invest in, and must take responsibility for.  Who saved that flight going into DTW?  The passengers.  Who prevented Richard Reed from detonating his shoe bomb?  Again, it was the passengers.


But if the passengers take care of business themselves, there'll be no reason to have a TSA anymore and a bunch of bureaucrats will have to scramble to find another excuse to stay on the government payroll instead of going out and getting a real job like the rest of us.

My $.02

RC
« Last Edit: January 27, 2010, 03:01:25 AM by Rooster Cruiser »
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Offline Fabo

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #4 on: January 26, 2010, 10:36:37 PM »
Well, with current TSA, I have to say... however good dog can be, people are dumb, only exception being when they are even dumber. You may have heard about a certain test when a coincidental by-flier unknowingly took bomb in his baggage from Poprad to Dublin ::banghead:: The bomb was placed in his baggage courtesy of Slovak Police Force, found by dog, and NOT taken out again by policeman.

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Offline Rooster Cruiser

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #5 on: January 27, 2010, 02:46:06 AM »
I found this article on a pilot website.  Leave it to the Israelis to show everyone how to do it right.

Quote
That's the process — six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---israelification-high-security-little-bother

Quote
The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother

December 30, 2009
Cathal Kelly


While North America's airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification.

That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel's, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience.

"It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago," said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He's worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world.

"Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don't take s--- from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, 'We're not going to do this. You're going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport."

That, in a nutshell is "Israelification" - a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.

Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel's largest hub, Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that?

"The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport," said Sela.

The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?

"Two benign questions. The questions aren't important. The way people act when they answer them is," Sela said.

Officers are looking for nervousness or other signs of "distress" — behavioural profiling. Sela rejects the argument that profiling is discriminatory.

"The word 'profiling' is a political invention by people who don't want to do security," he said. "To us, it doesn't matter if he's black, white, young or old. It's just his behaviour. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I'm doing this?"

Once you've parked your car or gotten off your bus, you pass through the second and third security perimeters.

Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behaviour. At Ben Gurion's half-dozen entrances, another layer of security are watching. At this point, some travellers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer.
"This is to see that you don't have heavy metals on you or something that looks suspicious," said Sela.

You are now in the terminal. As you approach your airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer takes your passport and ticket. They ask a series of questions: Who packed your luggage? Has it left your side?

"The whole time, they are looking into your eyes — which is very embarrassing. But this is one of the ways they figure out if you are suspicious or not. It takes 20, 25 seconds," said Sela.

Lines are staggered. People are not allowed to bunch up into inviting targets for a bomber who has gotten this far.

At the check-in desk, your luggage is scanned immediately in a purpose-built area. Sela plays devil's advocate — what if you have escaped the attention of the first four layers of security, and now try to pass a bag with a bomb in it?

"I once put this question to Jacques Duchesneau (the former head of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority): say there is a bag with play-doh in it and two pens stuck in the play-doh. That is 'Bombs 101' to a screener. I asked Ducheneau, 'What would you do?' And he said, 'Evacuate the terminal.' And I said, 'Oh. My. God.'

"Take Pearson. Do you know how many people are in the terminal at all times? Many thousands. Let's say I'm (doing an evacuation) without panic — which will never happen. But let's say this is the case. How long will it take? Nobody thought about it. I said, 'Two days.'"

A screener at Ben-Gurion has a pair of better options.

First, the screening area is surrounded by contoured, blast-proof glass that can contain the detonation of up to 100 kilos of plastic explosive. Only the few dozen people within the screening area need be removed, and only to a point a few metres away.

Second, all the screening areas contain 'bomb boxes'. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation.

"This is a very small simple example of how we can simply stop a problem that would cripple one of your airports," Sela said.

Five security layers down: you now finally arrive at the only one which Ben-Gurion Airport shares with Pearson — the body and hand-luggage check.

"But here it is done completely, absolutely 180 degrees differently than it is done in North America," Sela said.

"First, it's fast — there's almost no line. That's because they're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes. They're not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you," said Sela. "Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes ... and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys."

That's the process — six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.

This doesn't begin to cover the off-site security net that failed so spectacularly in targeting would-be Flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — intelligence. In Israel, Sela said, a coordinated intelligence gathering operation produces a constantly evolving series of threat analyses and vulnerability studies.

"There is absolutely no intelligence and threat analysis done in Canada or the United States," Sela said. "Absolutely none."

But even without the intelligence, Sela maintains, Abdulmutallab would not have gotten past Ben Gurion Airport's behavioural profilers.

So. Eight years after 9/11, why are we still so reactive, so un-Israelified?

Working hard to dampen his outrage, Sela first blames our leaders, and then ourselves.

"We have a saying in Hebrew that it's much easier to look for a lost key under the light, than to look for the key where you actually lost it, because it's dark over there. That's exactly how (North American airport security officials) act," Sela said. "You can easily do what we do. You don't have to replace anything. You have to add just a little bit — technology, training. But you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security. And that is something that the bureaucrats have a problem with. They are very well enclosed in their own concept."

And rather than fear, he suggests that outrage would be a far more powerful spur to provoking that change.
"Do you know why Israelis are so calm? We have brutal terror attacks on our civilians and still, life in Israel is pretty good. The reason is that people trust their defence forces, their police, their response teams and the security agencies. They know they're doing a good job. You can't say the same thing about Americans and Canadians. They don't trust anybody," Sela said. "But they say, 'So far, so good'. Then if something happens, all hell breaks loose and you've spent eight hours in an airport. Which is ridiculous. Not justifiable.

"But, what can you do? Americans and Canadians are nice people and they will do anything because they were told to do so and because they don't know any different."
« Last Edit: January 27, 2010, 07:35:31 AM by Rooster Cruiser »
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Offline Stef

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #6 on: January 27, 2010, 11:28:01 AM »
It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I mean we all seem to agree, and everybody with more than two brain cells to rub together can see, that all these security checks have got nothing to do with improving safety.

Now what is the point? Are they really a failure? Please don’t call me a conspiracy nut, but there’s people who say that the real reason behind all this is to condition us to being treated as cattle and slaves, not to protect us. It certainly feels that way to me.

A metal detector, the screening of carry-on luggage and the occasional pat-down… okay. So be it. There’s nuts on this planet and we have to have some kind of protection. Also the “looking for suspicious behaviour” they talk about in the article Rooster Cruiser posted, is probably the safest and cheapest method for real protection.

But then they started with having to take off your shoes, take off your belt, we need to check your ticket another couple of times sir, can we see you laptop please, take off your jacket, we need your thumbprint sir, no liquids allowed, you need to have a biometric passport, we need to take that camera or iPod and see if there’s terroristic material on the chip, now we need all your fingerprints sir… If I want to travel to the US, I even have to fill out an online form three days before departure, where they seriously ask me if I plan any illegal or terrorist activity! I wonder if anybody ever answered “yes” to that question.

And now this BS with the body scanners! It’s one more step in the same direction. And if they continue along this road, and we go along, in five or ten years from now we will have to give a retina scan, a DNA mouth swap, a blood sample and have a proctological examination everytime we want to take a flight, enter a shopping mall or ride the bus.

I mean, seriously guys, we have to draw the line somewhere, don’t we?

Now don’t even get me started on CCTV cameras, internet surveillance, wire tapping, disclosure of bank account information, biometric passports etc. etc…

Quite often I am impressed by how brilliant the founding fathers of the United States were. When you research history, you really start to appreciate the uniqueness of the idea behind that country! And they’re an inexhaustible source of extremely smart observations and quotes. Let me (freely) quote Benjamin Franklin here: “Those who are willing to trade essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, will end up losing both.” Now we’ve traded in quite a lot of our liberties. Did we get any safer? No? So, please can we have our liberties back?

Offline Rooster Cruiser

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #7 on: January 27, 2010, 05:56:40 PM »
Quote
It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I mean we all seem to agree, and everybody with more than two brain cells to rub together can see, that all these security checks have got nothing to do with improving safety.

Now what is the point? Are they really a failure? Please don’t call me a conspiracy nut, but there’s people who say that the real reason behind all this is to condition us to being treated as cattle and slaves, not to protect us. It certainly feels that way to me.

You've put your finger on it Stef, as our English friends would say.   ;D 8) ::bow::  There are elements in the Press (and elsewhere) who start screaming for protection.  The Government is bowing to that bad press in order to maintain the "Appearance" of doing something.  Nevermind that what they are doing has absolutely no effect to deter a methodical terrorist group.  It is just a very expensive and public display in order to appease the media and the masses.

Your conclusion is correct.  It doesn't matter whether the end result is accidental or intentional, it is still the same.  Sooner or later someone will take advantage of that conditioning.  Indeed, many have concluded that this has already happened.  I will not go further with this thread.  The evidence is out there.  You decide.

RC
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Offline 4X-NTY

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #8 on: January 27, 2010, 08:48:40 PM »
Mike, I have two not-really-helping advices:
number one is-watch Bill Hicks's stand up show, I find it inspiring,but mostly funny and true. and my second advice is-take an example from the pot-smoker,they do nothing and they win the war on drugs!

But seriously though, I have never been to the US so I have no idea what's it like, but from what you described, Israel is just a bit better then that,and not only in airport security, in most malls and coffee shops there's a security guy that checks your bag and asks if you carry weapon.
My point is-the US and israel which are both in continous threat of terror acts (in the US it may be less appearent but in here you can't ignore it), and must guard themselves as much as they can,or things like 9/11 could happen again. You may not feel it over there, but the terror organizations keep improving themselves and must not be undersestimated and you should consider them as smart as you if not smarter then you.
If I need to go through some scan in an x-ray machine to ensure my security,so be it.
Nitay "Pitz" Ronen

Offline spacer

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #9 on: January 27, 2010, 11:23:21 PM »
Quote
If I need to go through some scan in an x-ray machine to ensure my security,so be it.

...except that, as noted in the link I provided. It doesn't work well at all.
The best you can do is to cease de-clawing the population and allow them to defend themselves properly.
I mean, look at Israel... how many times have possible atrocities been averted by armed passers-by.

Offline TheSoccerMom

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #10 on: January 28, 2010, 01:01:51 AM »
Great strip, guys!!

As always, you got it just right....    ::bow::

Some years ago, I was with George once as he went through airport security -- after doing my days off on the Minivan --  I was just seeing him off at the airport.        :)   

He was trying to get his cowboy boots off...  and one stuck.  He kicked at it, then pulled with one hand, while trying not to tip over...  he was hopping around like a drunken fool, hopping on one leg....       ::)

He finally sighed in exasperation, and just kicked his booted leg out straight in front of him, and WHEEEEEEE!!       ::eek::

That boot flew off, and sailed right over the head of the TSA guy, over the glass-paneled security gate, over the heads of several innocent passengers, then landed WAY across the room, behind the security lines.

EVERYBODY burst out laughing...  we cracked up, the TSA guy ran to fetch the errant boot, and the whole place was laughing.     ::rofl::

Now, they'd probably tackle him and detain him for further questioning, but, it was funny as hell. 

GOOD THING HIS BOOT WASN'T LOADED........   

Don't make me come back there!!!!

Offline Mike

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #11 on: January 28, 2010, 01:30:00 AM »
That must have been quite a while ago, huh?! Like you mentioned, they might not take too kindly to this sort of thing anymore.
Reads just like a Chicken Wings strip though .......  ::thinking:: ......hmmmmm
wouldn't be the first one you inspired, mom....

BTW: RC! were you able to decipher the model of that scanner as well?!  ;) ;D


I just LOVE the Mfg name on the scanning machine, "Bare Butt Technologies"!!!   ::rofl:: ::rofl:: ::rofl:: ::rofl:: ::rofl::

RC
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Offline TheSoccerMom

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #12 on: January 28, 2010, 09:36:06 AM »
Haaa, yes, it was back in 2002?  2003?  Something like that, anyway....  we could NOT stop laughing....  it was contagious....

And what IS the model number on your scanner?  N U D I?  N U D E?  For chrissakes I should be able to READ that....

shouldn't I??!??    ::)

 ::loony::

 ::whistle::
Don't make me come back there!!!!

Offline Rooster Cruiser

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #13 on: January 28, 2010, 09:58:41 AM »
I kept reading it as "NUDF-3888".  I couldn't make anything of that, so I thought it best to leave it alone.   ::whistle:: ::drinking::

RC
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Offline Mike

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Re: TSA check
« Reply #14 on: January 28, 2010, 04:03:12 PM »
it's " NUDIF-I 3000"  ;)
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