TSA Carry On Weapons Confiscation...

[BigFatGuy]

Take a trip there are and you will see what security at an airport SHOULD BE like..

That's right... nobody is molesting children in front of their parents, women with nipple rings are not singled out for public humiliation, nobody's colostomy bags are burst all over themselves, soldiers are not asked to hand over nail clippers while carrying rifles.

The Israeli security team is highly trained, intelligent, driven individuals. The TSA is otherwise unemployable sadists with small minds, no official power, no supervision, and few restraints on their actions.

There is a reason one force works well, and one works not at all.

[BigFatGuy]

Our country is under attack. .

Yep... by people who want the government to keep them safe, no matter what the cost.

I am a native son of NYC. I am still angered to tears over the WTC... especially when I think that one Air Marshall on each craft could have saved the day... or one citizen who didn't believe the official line that we all need to keep quiet and let the terrorists do whatever they want.

The TSA is like Listerine. It may burn more then brushing your teeth, but it has no positive effect on oral hygiene. Pain is not proof of function, it just means they use too much alcohol in the recipe.

[A-J]

I love it when people bring Israel into the conversation. Israel also uses profiling by their security personel in the airports. Here in the USA, TSA is more likely to stop a gray haired grandmother than a middle eastern person due to political correctness. I have also seen women with cancer asked (told) to remove their hats, head scarves, or beanies so the TSA agent can see their chemo induced bald head, but they allow women with burkas and men with turbans through without requiring them to remove the headgear. If you want to have Israeli type security, bring it! However, the poliytical correctness of America will never allow it.

That's it in a nutshell, I think. The TSA is afraid of *everything* and have a ****-ton of rules. But htey don't bother teaching their people what the rules are and what they mean. And they do not back down. The people working for the TSA now are pretty much the same ones that were doing the security before, they just have new uniforms.

Security does not come from assessing threats by treating everyone equally. It comes from scrutinizing anyone who fits the profile of the bad guy. Don't grab grandma kettle for separate screening because she was the 10th person in line. Grab the dude wearing the shirt that says "Going to meet Allah today" even though that is not PC.

[dustoff31]

People say that they want the airlines to be responsible for security so they have the ability to "pay" for unsatisfactory service to the passenger.....if another attack was to happen under the airline responsible security what dollar amount would they pay out to the families that lost loved ones?

Well, according to the people who run the TSA,(the US gov't) it is:

Passengers that got injured?

Somewhere between $500 and $8.5 mllion.

http://www.justice.gov/archive/victimcompensation/payments_injury.html

What is the going compensation amount for a dead person these days?

$2,082,128

http://www.justice.gov/archive/victimcompensation/payments_deceased.html

If we want to talk about it strictly in terms of money, who is going to take airline security more seriously?

An airline on the hook for over two million per head, in a plane that carries 200-300 people, plus the cost of the aircraft and any collateral damage on the ground. Or,

The TSA. Who continues to get paid, whether a planes blows up or not and bears no responsibility whatsoever either way.

[mincoda]

Some people have forgotten immediately after 9/11 when national guardsman were stationed in airports. Funny no one was *****en then. There are people in this world that want to hurt the USA... So to me a little inconvenience by security is just simply how the world works today get use to it because it is reality.

The security screening in the US is no different than anywhere else in the world today. I know this first hand as I have had taken several international flight recently.

TSA is not perfect by any means, but I for one would rather have them there than not.

[dustoff31]

There are people in this world that want to hurt the USA... So to me a little inconvenience by security is just simply how the world works today get use to it because it is reality.

True. The question is not whether we need security, but rather who should be doing it.

TSA is not perfect by any means, but I for one would rather have them there than not.

The TSA is just another form of a bailout. It's a government jobs program for people who would otherwise be working as private security guards, just as many of them were before the creation of the TSA.

[mincoda]

True. The question is not whether we need security, but rather who should be doing it.



The TSA is just another form of a bailout. It's a government jobs program for people who would otherwise be working as private security guards, just as many of them were before the creation of the TSA.

TSA was created by the Bush administration..Just for the record.

[dustoff31]

TSA was created by the Bush administration..Just for the record.

I don't care if Mickey Mouse created it. What does that have to do with anything?

[mincoda]

Mickey Mouse did.

[dustoff31]

Mickey Mouse did.

And it has been continued by his pal, Goofy.

[wayneinFL]

I want to assume you were too young or very young during the 9-11 years. I actually hope you are in your early 20s because if you are over 30 and can't remember the aftermath of 9-11 you need to re-educate yourself. Then again it brings me back to what I said right after 9-11 (that got a room full of people pissed at me....) America has a short term memory, in less than a year, [after 9-11] our inconvenience will be more important than protecting the country from attack.

Like I said, I've been with the same company for 15 years- I am older than 20.

I was at the Hewlett-Packard building in Fort Lauderdale on an installation for some little financial company that had a sister office in the twin towers. They lost communication- servers dropped, phone calls cut off, etc. They initially thought that it was just a telecom issue until they started calling cellphones. Someone in NYC who had the day off told them a plane had hit the building. We sat in the conference room with them and were watching the first tower burn when the second plane hit.

BTW, our office was a half mile from the AMI building before it was shut down because of anthrax. We removed BelllSouth equipment from that one and installed equipment in their new location.

So I am not numb to the reality of the situation, but I'm not going to make judgments based on emotion.

I remember flying out to Washington state in October 2001. I specifically remember security tearing through an old woman's suitcase while three Arabs walked through unmolested- would have been discrimination to profile them. And yeah, there were Guardsmen stationed all through the airport, but it wasn't as if they were on the planes. So a fat lot of good any of it would have done. It was just a hell of a lot of hassle- the government protection did nothing to make us safer, did nothing to combat the terrorists. And we're not a whole lot better off today.

You want to know where we failed on 9/11 and where we're failing today? This attitude that we're not responsible for our own safety, and that we have to rely on the government. This is what allowed four guys with little knives to take aver a plane with 50 people on it. This is why the flight crews cooperated and why people were dialing 911 FROM AN AIRPLANE- IN THE AIR- and telling the government to help them. (This is the same attitude the antigunners have , BTW)

And we have the same attitude today. We're willing to give up anything for the government to protect us. We need more Air Marshals, we need the TSA to disarm us, we're willing to spend billions and give up any rights, desperate for the government to protect us.

It wasn't always this way. I remember someone trying to hijack a plane back in the 70's. With a gun, not a pocketknife. The passengers, probably WWII, Korea or Vietnam veterans, took his gun and held him down until the plane landed safely and the hijacker could be handed over to authorities. This is the kind of attitude we need to have. We need, as a nation, to grow some balls and deal with these people as citizens instead of sheep.

Is it perfect? Of course not. Can't some of these guys going to slip through the cracks? Of course they can. Just as they can with the multi-billion dollar security we have in place now. At a certain point we just have to accept that sometimes you get the bear and sometimes he gets you.

[dustoff31]

It wasn't always this way. I remember someone trying to hijack a plane back in the 70's. With a gun, not a pocketknife. The passengers, probably WWII, Korea or Vietnam veterans, took his gun and held him down until the plane landed safely and the hijacker could be handed over to authorities.

Yep. The '70s. The hayday of the Federal Air Marshal program. When planes were being highjacked at a rate of like, one a week.

[mincoda]

Less than 1% of daily commercial flights in US have an Air Marshal on them. Not a lot of Marshals and a lot of daily flights.

[CitaDeL]

I believe that the TSA is irrelvant and ineffective, because after 9-11-01 no commercial plane will be hijacked by a small number of people with weapons or claiming to have weapons without facing the probability of being outnumbered and overrun by noncompliant 'hostages'.

[Deadbolt]

Less than 1% of daily commercial flights in US have an Air Marshal on them. Not a lot of Marshals and a lot of daily flights.

if this is fact, it is the single biggest "bummer" i've heard all week. What a disservice and it really only fosters the "Security Theater" argument.

DP and LIL Wayne here are interesting polarities to be sure, but I think the most telling issue is what is mentioned in this little quote above.