guy vs TSA (Thousands Standing Around)

Read the whole thing and they are both in the wrong. Give me a break with his crap abt "what your doing is sexual harrassment" and "the government took my rights away after September 11th." People like this make me so angry its ridiculous. Just walk through the xray or submit to the damn pat down.

However, once his ticket was refunded the nonsense the TSA pulled is also nonsense. They should have just let him leave without trying to exercise futher authority.

Up until that point they were in the right.

TSA is more like show security to fool the dumb ass masses, pretty useless as a organazation and a huge waste of money.

100000% accurate.

Right, it's a waste of money that achieves nothing for our country.

Actually, the right not to be molested is just as important as the right to fly (or not to fly) on a secure flight.

The path on which we are traveling leads to a complete loss of personal privacy at the hands of an all-powerful government... as in Orwell's 1984.

Today the government can confiscate your laptop and read its contents when you enter the country; tomorrow, if this continues, TSA will break down the doors of your home and cart away your computers, all without any probable cause to suspect terrorism or disloyalty... they'll say that random searches are necessary to prevent terrorists from researching and planning bombings.

Soon the TSA, ever anxious to increase its scope, will monitor your emails, texts, and phone calls. God help you if you write or say "bomb" (e.g. "that comedian really bombed last night"), "fuse" (e.g. "my wife has a really short fuse") or any other term which the TSA, in its idiocy, deems unsafe.

There are lots and lots of excuses for taking away our liberties... and relatively few people worrying about protecting them.

Beware complacency!

So you'd rather get on a plane without any security in place at all? 9/11 was less than ten years ago. What would happen if another attack occurred? Would you blame the government for not stopping it? Or would you be just fine with it because your liberties remained intact?

Quick drug store analogy:

One should hire security guards and implement protection methods only to the degree that they prevent likely theft.

In other words, make your drug store secure enough that most shop lifters go somewhere else, but realize that you will always be vulnerable to the theiving professionals. There will always be crime.

Likewise, there will always be people who try to blow up airplanes and they will find a way to do it. Try to reduce the risk of the average idiot doing it, but accept the risk of the dedicated suicide bomber.

Air travel remains very safe. ....but, yes, some people like to see things "go boom", and they will always be with us.

....others will choose means of travel far riskier than flying: like driving a car, or riding a motorcycle. These activites (like all activites) are filled with risk.

For now, the train may be safest and best. The TSA hasn't destroyed it yet. However, it isn't very quick. Let people live their lives.

....but I'm not mean: I don't want the TSA people to be unemployed. If we are going to create make-work programs, we should have them work in the parks, or something.

Keep Fear Alive!

invest part of what the government what is presently spending on the TSA in high speed trains.

....so we could have infrastructure similar to the rest of the world.

Some people don't think before they post on here and it amazes me. The TSA didn't wake up one morning and say, "You know what, lets touch some people's junk before they get on the plane, you know bc we have nothing better to do."

A man got a bomb on a plane by putting it in his underwear. And the bomb ignited! Are we missing that fact? If not for shoddy work, it would have exploded and killed everyone on the plane.

You people need to get over yourselves and your issues with body image and dick size and whatever else is causing you to hide behind "the right to privacy." You seem to forget that the laws of this country contain the word "unreasonable."

Searching people in all areas and putting them through full body scanners is pretty reasonable considering the current events.

It's not a slippery slope, that argument has no merit. If you don't like the policies, don't fly! Boarding an airplane is not an inalienable right.

Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness....and the right to do whatever the hell you want and wine about it if it isn't perfect? I missed that clause.

You guys are arguing from a false premise, which is that the TSA's methods are actually the most effective way to prevent terrorism on planes. They are not. Nor are they cost effective in any way whatsoever. Billions of tax dollars are being misspent. Billions.

You can still get liquids on the plane. If you wanted to get an underwear bomb on the plane, it wouldn't be that hard.

As various TSA observers have said, the best defense is stopping terrorists before they get to the airport. Any terrorist with half a brain can get by the current TSA screening methods.

A terrorist doesn't even need to get on the plane. They could just blow up a bomb in the security line and it would have achieve the same ends.

Read the Atlantic article if you don't believe what a joke the TSA is.

The TSA COULD be effective. It COULD be a good use of money if it did things differently.

But it doesn't.

It is a sad irony that in the TSA’s efforts to protect individuals from potential harm caused by terrorists, we are potentially going to give people cancer.

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/11/18/tsa-scanners-increasing-our-cancer-risk-to-protect-us-from-harm/

TSA Scanners: Increasing Our Cancer Risk to Protect Us from Harm

By: Jon Walker Thursday November 18, 2010 10:31 am

Beyond the invasion of privacy problems caused by these x-ray-based airport security “porno scanners,” there are real health concerns. According to Dr. Michael Love, these scanners are going to give some people cancer. From Alternet.org:

“They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays,” Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, told AFP.

“No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner,” he said.

The level of X-ray exposure from a single use of the machine is small, but if they are the primary screening technology at the airport, we are talking about millions of individuals exposed multiple times a year.

With the X-rays concentrated at the skin, it is statistically likely that some of these millions of people who travel through the machines will develop cancer. Individuals who are predisposed to cancer would be at increased risk.

It is a sad irony that in the TSA’s efforts to protect individuals from potential harm caused by terrorists, we are potentially going to give people cancer.

Since 9/11, we have had no Americans die as a result of weapons smuggled on to an airplane through an American airport using our previous screening system. The risk of dying that way is very small. Even if these backscatter x-ray scanners cause skin cancer in as few as one out of every 500,000 people, they still, in a safety cost-benefit analysis, do more harm to Americans than good.

Welcome to the warped world of security theater, where the treatment is even more dangerous to you than the disease.

booklaw wrote:

Actually, the right not to be molested is just as important as the right to fly (or not to fly) on a secure flight.

The path on which we are traveling leads to a complete loss of personal privacy at the hands of an all-powerful government... as in Orwell's 1984.

Today the government can confiscate your laptop and read its contents when you enter the country; tomorrow, if this continues, TSA will break down the doors of your home and cart away your computers, all without any probable cause to suspect terrorism or disloyalty... they'll say that random searches are necessary to prevent terrorists from researching and planning bombings.

Soon the TSA, ever anxious to increase its scope, will monitor your emails, texts, and phone calls. God help you if you write or say "bomb" (e.g. "that comedian really bombed last night"), "fuse" (e.g. "my wife has a really short fuse") or any other term which the TSA, in its idiocy, deems unsafe.

There are lots and lots of excuses for taking away our liberties... and relatively few people worrying about protecting them.

Beware complacency!

yeah apparently two business men met at the airport on their way to a meeting in chicago and the first one said "Hi Bill!" the second said "hi Jack!" and the TSA violated/interrogated them for hours

That Burger King example has got to be the STUPIDEST idea I have ever heard. That added absolutely nothing to the conversation. It should you have an obsession with fatty foods and nothing more. Seriously, I'm kind of offended someone patted themselves on the back with that post and the self-rightous, cringe inducing comment "now if I can bypass security with a $15 uniform....." I'd love for that poster to try it. In fact, I'll drive you to the airport to execute your "fool proof plan." (fool created plan?) Either way, the simple fact you wrote that is so frustrating when people are discussing a serious topic...the idiocy of that idea is only surpassed by the fact that when you finished writing it....you looked at it and thought it was a good idea!

And look, I completely understand that there is a mod rule on this sight regarding insulting others. So I want to make it clear I know nothing about this Whynot poster and I dont want you to think its a personal attack. But that idea is monumentally dumb and it deserves to be labeled as such.

Additionally, when groups of people with the last names that indicate they are black, irish, jewish, italian, polish russian, etc initiate repeated attempts to attack this country and are wildly successful in one of those attempts - then all people with those last names deserve to be given additional attention. It should be executed with dignity and respect - but they need the extra scrutiny. In the meantime, as long as the people in the aforementioned group have last names like Mohammed - people should continue to be wary. Its not racism or profiling - its common sense.

Sorry, 1980. That's just wrong! Some creep named Smith tries to set off a bomb and every Smith, Jones and other WASP in the country is considered guilty until proven innocent?

How about Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber? Or Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber? Shall we profile all Americans and non-Americans with Irish or Polish names?

Wondering if most people know the underwear bomber boarded a plane in Amsterdam. And that Dutch airports aren't controlled by the TSA.