End Airport Security Theater

[cos]

With time off from work or school, chances are many of you are going to fly somewhere in the next month.

You'll probably have to take off your shoes, likely go through a full body scanner, will be forced to leave all your liquids at home or take a checked bag (and pay for it), and either way won't have your drink when you get to the gates. You may wait a long time in line for security, possibly longer than you expected, worrying about being late for your flight, and then reach the end and have to rapidly take off and unpack a number of things. Some of you will accidentally leave something in your carry-on bag and then be forced to choose between missing your flight or discarding the item - possibly something useful, or with sentimental meaning, or that cost some money.

All for nothing.

None of these practices contribute in any way whatsoever to anyone's safety. All they do is increase stress, delay, cost, and the risk of theft (when your expensive stuff is waiting in a tray at the end and you're still going through the scanners). We are literally spending large amounts of money just to make our lives worse, with no benefit to balance it. Just to waste our time and destroy some of our possessions and make travel stressful and less pleasant.

Why? Because our political leaders are afraid of us. They fear that not only do we demand this stuff, but that if anything bad happens, they might be blamed for not having done enough. Many of them know this security theater at airports is harmful, but they're afraid that we don't know it, and they'll be punished if they try to change it.

Show them that may not be true. When it's still fresh in your mind, after you've just flown somewhere or returned home. Call them and ask them to end it.

You can look up your US Senators and Representative's phone numbers on lots of sites, such as this directory.

Comments

[gconnor.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this also: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-18/how-airport-security-is-killing-us

"Researchers at Cornell University suggest that people switching from air to road transportation in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks led to an increase of 242 driving fatalities per month... They also suggest that enhanced domestic baggage screening alone reduced passenger volume by about 5 percent in the five years after 9/11, and the substitution of driving for flying by those seeking to avoid security hassles over that period resulted in more than 100 road fatalities.

So, whether or not TSA is making it safer to fly, people are dying on the roads instead.

[sandhawke.livejournal.com]

Very nicely said, and of course I totally agree with you.

I've become very aware lately, though, that what people want is *not* safety but rather a sense of security. I'm starting to suspect that any way you test people, by and large, most of them would rather have a sense of reduced risk than actual reduced risk, when the risks are miniscule.

Given this, the TSA is just giving people what they want, performing a ceremony for warding off evil, if you will, making most people feel more safe. Such ceremonies have to be intrusive, inconvenient, and a little threatening to be psychological effective I suspect -- like good placebos.

Now, if we can convince enough people to feel less secure instead of more secure in their socks, *then* we have a chance of changing things.

[goljerp]

This, plus the fact that some of us don't want to be exposed to the backscatter xray scanners, thank you very much.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

There's a real problem in that precisely because people are worried about these things (largely because the government told them to be) itif the government makes it easier to attack in these methods, the terrorists will want to do exactly that, in order to play one-upsmanship and sow discord. Creating security theater was awful. But I'm not sure stopping it is a good idea.

[elfy.livejournal.com]

But isn't this being afraid/feeling secure all what terrorism *and* politics is about?
And doesn't more surveillance lead to the feeling in the population, that the surveillance is actually needed?
It's a bit like subtle mental training. To say it in extreme words: Terrorism has made it very easy for some governments to control and surveille it's citizens. Many people will out of fear allow really strong breaches of privacy, just - as you say it - feel a little safer, yes, BUT this is because the government (falsely) teaches them that all this invasion is needed to guarantee security.

I know we are on the same side ;) I just try to make a point about "what people want ... sense of security". Because I think what people *think* is secure is very much dependant on what the government "sells" them as being secure. It could also promote/make clear, that the TSA is useless and instead promote other, less intrusive but just as effective options (whatever that may be).

[whipchick.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, when one leaves the USA and enters an EU country, one must again be screened...because they don't trust the USA screening. So you get off the plane in, say, Iceland and go right through a metal detector/carry-on baggage inspection again.

Another contributing factor to the horrors of security theatre is that airline baggage fees encourage people to carry on far more than they need to. My last few flights (Europe, India, South Africa) all had half-full overhead bins, even on full flights, and almost nothing on the floor. (South African Airlines also collected all the blankets at the end of the trip, saying they were a tripping hazard in the aisles in an emergency). More carry-ons = more time in line.

I know how to get my scissors on a plane if I've forgotten them in my carry-on, or if I'm only taking carry-on and I need them.

I once, for the sake of curiosity, "forgot" to take out my liquids bag for six weeks one summer. I went through 8 US airports, 3 European and 2 Asian--the only people who caught it were London Heathrow. I did, however, miss a flight one year in Detroit while the security searched for my MASCARA that I had forgotten to take out of a makeup bag.

And I, too, refuse to go through a backscatter machine.

[wotw]

I hate this stuff as much as you do, but I hate stuff like this even more:

None of these practices contribute in any way whatsoever to anyone's safety.

I can't imagine how you'd go about testing such a hypothesis so I can't imagine any justification for asserting it as a fact.

I'd be happy with "I don't personally find it remotely plausible that there are any safety benefits sufficient to justify all this annoyance".

But given a choice between eliminating airport security and eliminating the unwarranted assertion of empirical "facts", I'd take the latter.

[elusiveat.livejournal.com]

Have you considered starting a petition? Signon seems to make it pretty easy.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

What's this "time off" thing you're talking about? I have the pager on Christmas.

[(Anonymous)]

Word. I opt out every time, but I think the entire thing is ridiculous (not the mention that opting out isn't ever mentioned as an option; if I didn't already know that it was, I'd think based on what I see at the airports that I HAD to go through that thing).

[solestria.livejournal.com]

Er, that anonymous comment was from me because I never expect LJ to randomly log me out, despite years of experience to the contrary. :P

[cos]

While there's something to that, we most certainly do not need show removal or the liquid ban or full image scanners to make people feel secure. People weren't demanding these things, and they were not imposed out of a need to make people feel better about flying the way the original post-9/11 measures were. Hardly anyone would miss them if they were removed from the system, people would still get plenty of security theater at airports, and travel would be much more pleasant.

[cos]

Why shouldn't the burden of proof be on those who claim these things do add security?

You might be giving some variation of "we don't know anything for sure", but you could then make that same objection to almost any factual statement without a qualifier. I find that intensely silly.

What you're saying is very similar to the objections that some groups make to well-established scientific knowledge. Like creationists. We don't actually know that God didn't create the earth a few thousand years ago, so technically we ought to couch all statements to the contrary as very likely rather than certain. But doing so would render the entire point of qualifiers and markers of uncertainty almost pointless; when you have to tag everything as uncertain in normal conversation, those tags lose their meaning.

The idea that these measures make us safer is about as plausible as the idea that God created the earth a few thousand years ago in one week. It is not worthy of qualifiers.

[cos]

Interestingly, when one leaves the USA and enters an EU country, one must again be screened...because they don't trust the USA screening.

I had the opposite experience in Italy: It seemed the US had demanded a whole separate terminal for flights departing Rome to the US, because the US didn't trust the Italians' security.

More recently when I flew to Germany and Majorca via England, I don't recall a re-screening. Although when I flew El Al in the 90s, they always did their own screening regardless of what the airport did, and if you had a stopover they'd re-screen you if you left the immediate gate lounge, even if you only went to shops and such on the same concourse, within the airport's own passengers-only security boundary. Of course the passengers-only security boundary airports have is tremendously porous, since it allows lots of shops to hire whoever they want, and deliveries come in by unscreened people, and etc. - but like I said above, this is all pointless theater. What El Al did, I think, was real security.

[wotw]

If you find the theory of evolution no more plausible than the assertion that TSA security has some positive impact, then all I can conclude is that I'm a whole lot more confident about evolution than you are.

[cos]

Whereas I conclude that you have a misguidedly inflated sense of the possibility that our current airport security theater has practical security value.

[wotw]

So honestly now: An infallible oracle tells you that either the theory of evolution is wrong, or TSA security has some positive value, but not both. Do you really figure you might just as welll flip a coin?