Bullshit security theater from the TSA.

[feuervogel]

NYT

A choice selection:

passengers on international flights coming to the United States will apparently have to remain in their seats for the last hour of a flight without any personal items on their laps. Overseas passengers will be restricted to only one carry-on item aboard the plane, and domestic passengers will probably face longer security lines.

So, hmm, no blankets? No books? No getting up to take a piss before the final descent? Thanks, TSA! You'll make people more likely to dehydrate themselves when flying (increasing the risk for contracting diseases *and* getting DVT!) so they won't have to get up in that last hour.

And good luck not pissing off travelers when families with kids can't keep their kids occupied that final hour of the flight with books, DVDs, toys, or whatever the fuck else.

I feel so secure knowing that the TSA is protecting me from *yesterday's* terrorist threat. I'd feel much better if they tried to protect me from tomorrow's or next year's.

Poke around Bruce Schneier's site for more info.

ETA: From Schneier:

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders. When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

Often, this "something" is directly related to the details of a recent event: we confiscate liquids, screen shoes, and ban box cutters on airplanes. But it's not the target and tactics of the last attack that are important, but the next attack. These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning. If we spend billions defending our rail systems, and the terrorists bomb a shopping mall instead, we've wasted our money. If we concentrate airport security on screening shoes and confiscating liquids, and the terrorists hide explosives in their brassieres and use solids, we've wasted our money. Terrorists don't care what they blow up and it shouldn't be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets.

Our penchant for movie plots blinds us to the broader threats. And security theater consumes resources that could better be spent elsewhere.

Comments

[ladydreamer.livejournal.com]

I was just kvetching to my bff about this. They're CHARGING to check any luggage, $20 a piece, and then they say, just one carry on! Or you'll face really long lines!

We already face long lines. I don't see how making sure people can't piss during the last hour of flight is going to do anything to protect us. It's like the new guideline where I have to take off my shoes. Let's just add new stuff so people will feel like we're doing something to protect them.

[feuervogel]

Bruce Schneier coined the term "security theater," and he references it a lot. But basically, it's the act of making people *think* they're safer because the baddies won't try *that* again! While at the same time not doing anything to prevent the baddies from thinking up new ways to scare us.

Argh!

[leora.livejournal.com]

High speed rail. Yesterday. Plskthx.

[feuervogel]

I endorse this comment.

[kirin]

Of course, then someone blows up a train (like they already did in Spain) and we'd potentially have the same problems.

Also doesn't help getting across the ocean.

None of that means I wouldn't welcome US high speed rail with open arms and hallelujahs, though.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Completely true. Although if the planes had merely been blown up with the people on them, I don't think we'd have as much security theater as we do from the planes having been used as weapons to cause serious harm to a lot of people in NYC. Harder to do that with a train.

However, yeah, high speed rail isn't a substitute for fixing the security theater. And I do support fixing it. It's just the worse it gets, the more I wish for better options. Plus, I and one of my family members have a sensitivity to air pressure changes. You get those even in cars and on trains, but it's not as bad as with planes. So, having better train options would be really nice.

I'd like both less security theater and better trains. I am likely to get neither. But so it goes.

[theinfamousj.livejournal.com]

Look, as sad as it is for the passengers on a single airliner, blowing up one single airplane while it is in midair is really a minor act of terrorism. To treat that sort of an occurrence as having the power to stop the US (and to react in the news as such) is just crazyinsane. It would make America sad, sure, but then the next shiny thing would come about (perhaps a torrid love affair between a politician and an A list celebrity) and everyone would forget all about it.

Everyone but TSA. Who would be very busy trying to close the door after the horse has already escaped the barn.

And I still think that if TSA spent all this time and effort on identifying triggering devices from xray scans, they could actually be effective. All secondary explosives need either a primary explosive or an electronic trigger. So far, what we've heard about on the news has required an electronic trigger. An electronic trigger that TSA allowed to get on the airplane. Especially when the OLDEST form of airport security is an xray scan. You'd think that by now they'd have enough practice to be able to catch the triggers. A secondary explosive is just dead weight without the trigger.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.