Election 2010: Teabaggin' the Ds & Rs

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Penske 2.0

While I don't expect perfection on day one, I think that you're more tolerant of trial and error than I am. Having hired/managed enough people in my life in disparate jobs and industries, I can do a quick once over of the TSA personnel at most, if not all, airports that I have been in, and surmise, in my subjective analysis, that at base line there's a competency problem that's going to lead to a grossly inefficient trial and error process.

The baseline you are referring to is not the group determining policies.

The group that is determining policies has to institute new procedures to deal with evolving threats. When they do this, they are going to err on the side of too little privacy, because the costs of that error are much lower than the costs of erring on the side of too little security. So, I'm pretty tolerant of "trial and error" that works that way -- that upsets people for a few days, mostly people who believe they have a god-given right to walk onto an airplane without anyone asking them a question, or people who delude themselves into thinking that someone wants to look at an image of their naked ass.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

Yet, they will not employ the technique which is, perhaps, the most critical to ensuring safety - profiling.

Depends on what you mean by profiling. Profiling based on behaviors and risk factors surely could be "valuable" (to the extent that one thinks there is value in further enhancing airport security).

As to profiling based on race/identity, (1) is incredibly easy to evade, and (2) is no doubt in place informally (ask anyone with an Arab name, although anecdotally I have heard that it is less apparent now than in the not so distant past).

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

Yet, they will not employ the technique which is, perhaps, the most critical to ensuring safety - profiling. Instead, they strip search nuns and children. Good times.

But Fox says they're making exceptions for women in burkas.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

Yet, they will not employ the technique which is, perhaps, the most critical to ensuring safety - profiling. Instead, they strip search nuns and children. Good times.

"They strip search nuns and children." No one here but us non-hysterical types.


What profiling are you suggesting? All Arabs? All Muslims?

[Sidd Finch]

Or something like that. I'm just not buying the TSA's version of the story, below:

On November 19, a family was traveling through a TSA checkpoint at the Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC). Their son alarmed the walk through metal detector and needed to undergo secondary screening. The boy's father removed his son's shirt in an effort to expedite the screening. After our TSO completed the screening, he helped the boy put his shirt back on. That's it. No complaints were filed and the father was standing by his son for the entire procedure.


It should be mentioned that you will not be asked to and you should not remove clothing (other than shoes, coats and jackets) at a TSA checkpoint. If you're asked to remove your clothing, you should ask for a supervisor or manager.

Let's move on -- no more kiddie porn on Youtube, I want to watch some nuns getting stripped!

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Adder

Depends on what you mean by profiling. Profiling based on behaviors and risk factors surely could be "valuable" (to the extent that one thinks there is value in further enhancing airport security).

Yeah, profiling for drug dealers based on behaviors and risk factors has sure helped stop all those drugs coming into the US.

Effective profiling is very difficult and expensive, particularly in an arena where the acceptable margin of error is basically zero.

Have you ever seen the criteria used to determine if someone was a drug dealer? Virtually anyone could score a hit on those.

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Let's move on -- no more kiddie porn on Youtube, I want to watch some nuns getting stripped!

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

I want to watch some nuns getting stripped!

Do none of you people know how to google?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

The execution seems to include a little trial-and-error -- policies that are announced and then hashed out over a little bit of time. This is hardly the first time anyone has complained about the TSA going overboard. Remember when no one was allowed to bring water on the plane? Eventually, that got worked out in a way that imposes relatively little hassle for (hopefully) substantially improved security.

The TSA has to balance privacy and security, plus other interests like cost. It has to do this in a context where the threats are shifting and evolving (as are the nature of privacy and cost concerns).

If anyone thinks that they could develop policies that score perfectly on both competing concerns, well, that's probably the same person who thinks that he can eliminate the deficit solely by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.

It would be delightful if someone at the TSA were really trying to strike that balance, but what they do is security theater. Wasting people's time is a feature, not a bug, as it conveys the message that they are Doing Something, which is designed to cover asses if something happens.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

It would be delightful if someone at the TSA were really trying to strike that balance, but what they do is security theater. Wasting people's time is a feature, not a bug, as it conveys the message that they are Doing Something, which is designed to cover asses when something happens.

Fixed that for you

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Yeah, profiling for drug dealers based on behaviors and risk factors has sure helped stop all those drugs coming into the US.

Effective profiling is very difficult and expensive, particularly in an arena where the acceptable margin of error is basically zero.

Have you ever seen the criteria used to determine if someone was a drug dealer? Virtually anyone could score a hit on those.

What I would like is for everyone to acknowledge that allowing children/nuns/breast cancer survivors/bladder cancer survivors/rape victims/etc. to board planes without invasive screening procedures employed with everyone else involves some risk. We all balance risk differently (as noted by the 90% of people who say they have no prob with the new TSA protocols) so the only truly stupid thing one can say about all this mess is "They should use their judgment and not pat down the _______ people because the ________ people aren't the ones bringing bombs onto planes." I mean, come the fuck on -- do we think our enemies are stupid? That they're above putting C4 on a toddler? The only stupid thing one can say is "I want maximum security but I want 0.05% of the population not to be inconvenienced by these searches because it makes me feel gross to see them get frisked." That kind of thinking will eventually mean everybody's exempted OR everybody but the Muslims are exempted and in either case the security effectiveness goes to zero.

I traveled with a seven month old in December 2001. Did I freak out about the fact he was treated like a potential terrorist like the rest of us? Fuck no, because in spite of some of the things I have posted on these boards I am not a solipsistic moron.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

so the only truly stupid thing one can say about all this mess is "They should use their judgment and not pat down the _______ people because the ________ people aren't the ones bringing bombs onto planes." I mean, come the fuck on -- do we think our enemies are stupid? That they're above putting C4 on a toddler?

Exactly.

ETA: Also, if this was shorter it could serve as a board motto: "in spite of some of the things I have posted on these boards I am not a solipsistic moron"

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by Adder

Exactly.

BTW, to continue my rant, anyone who wants to say "________ shouldn't be patted down" should be forced to finish the sentence with "even though I acknowledge there is a tiny marginal risk to exempting them." Let the policy decision go as it will, civil liberties versus security, but you can't get something for nothing and the people who say "There's no chance of a nun bringing a bomb so there's no security tradeoff here" are too stupid to be entrusted with elective or government offices.

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Effective profiling is very difficult and expensive, particularly in an arena where the acceptable margin of error is basically zero.

That's not what I understand. My understanding is that the Israelis rely heavily on this.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

It would be delightful if someone at the TSA were really trying to strike that balance, but what they do is security theater. Wasting people's time is a feature, not a bug, as it conveys the message that they are Doing Something, which is designed to cover asses if something happens.

Well said. Absolutely no portion of airport security is done for security-related purposes. The entire system is a PR campaign. Whether it's full-body scans, metal detectors, x-raying bags, disallowing transport of liquids or matches.... why, it's all just political theater. Not one person in the TSA really cares about security.

You are generally above this kind of "The Government is just a bunch of evil incompetent thugs trying to waste our time and money" meme. What happened -- bad flight this weekend?