TSA: Proper Procedures Followed in Child Pat-Down

[Broomstick]

I think that the modifications they already did to plane's flight cabin, plus a couple armed guards (decently trained, not like the ones in banks) disguised as passengers would be more than enough to stop the average random fuckers without the need for all this pointless show.

The "armed guards" are called air marshalls and we've had them since the 1970's. Of course, the government won't tell you that over the years their numbers had been cut back because they were "too expensive" and the idea of firing a gun on an airplane "too dangerous" or something.

But again, I have really nothing to hide. They can pull out my wang and play with it for the hell I care. My "discomfort" meter starts with anal inspections.

Just because you're comfortable with something that, in almost any other circumstance, would qualify as sexual assault doesn't mean the rest of the world is. Including the TSA agents who have to conduct such searches.

[Simon_Jester]

Not that intelligence agencies don't violate privacy, it's just that they don't get caught doing it so easily.

Yes, and they do this by keeping a low profile- specifically, they do not walk up to random people in public places and do intrusive searches of them. Except for secret police in totalitarian regimes, their surveillance tends to be, at the very least, targeted. As long as they're not pointed at internal political dissidents, I'd much rather deal with a privacy-violating intelligence agency than the privacy-violating TSA.

I attempted humor above, I'll clarify. I easily understand why, but I don't agree with the assumption that such feeling is the right reaction.
It depends from what you get from that. If it increases security it may be worth it. If it is just for show it's a waste of time.

Thing is, there's no evidence whatsoever that it increases security: "Could conceivably catch some threat we could imagine happening some day" is not the same as "increases security." Not when the odds of that threat ever materializing are so miniscule, and when the cost of the procedure is being paid every damn day by millions of people.

So if it's not just for show, it's because the people who enacted the policy are too stupid to do basic cost-benefit calculations, or too unwilling to recognize that other people might value their privacy more than they value reducing the probability that a random citizen might be a terrorist from 0.0000005% to, say, 0.0000003% or whatever.

Yes, I encountered my fair share of abusive police/customs/guard guys, but I don't assume all security personnel must be like them.

It does not require deliberate abusiveness to create an unjust policy. People who are 'just doing their jobs' can enforce even hideous laws and regulations, let alone relatively less bad ones like TSA inspection regulations.

I do not want to be subjected to, and I do not want my loved ones to be subjected to, intrusive inspections to lower the perceived risk that they might be a terrorist from 0.0000005% to 0.0000003%.

Maybe all this is to keep safer the people on skyscrapers. An airplane can kill much more people than its own passengers.

Nope. No one has tried to hijack an airplane in US airspace since 9/11, with reason: at this point, you would be hard-pressed to hijack the plane with anything less than a submachine gun, because the passengers are no longer going to believe the hijacker's intentions are something mild like "Thees plane ees going to Havana."

Terrorists are back to bombing airplanes, which means the threat is to the people in the plane, not to the people on the ground. The passengers themselves are the main guarantee of security against hijackings now.

The airport would be in shutdown then, no one would fly, and then they'd install airscrubbers into the ventilation system once that was figured out to be the problem. Hell, they'd probably ground all flights from that airport that day and reroute all incoming planes to nearby airports, too. In short, it'd be complete chaos, but it wouldn't result in an airplane exploding, in all likelihood.

I'd like to know what professionals will do in case all dogs sniff explosives everywhere. Without hindsight telling the real cause. (like that guy in the first posts of this thread)

They probably wouldn't tell you. But basically, this is an Evil Overlord List entry; it's like "oh hey we have a camera malfunction." In real security on sites that take the job seriously, the response is "go send a guy to check out the area and install a spare" or something, not "ignore it."

Also, something_else is getting waaay too 'cute' with this kind of plan.

You looked at the 9/11 guys plan? Does it seem easy to implement for you? My plan is crap since I made it in 10 seconds and without having a look at the airport I need to fool (the "battleground" so to speak). But any real terroristic attack has going to be horribly complex and very risky as well.
They even planned redundancy in case of losses.

You missed my point. The 9/11 plot had certain traits.
-It was compartmentalized: the plan came in steps, each step could be completed without something else happening simultaneously.
-Each step was something the hijackers knew they could do fairly confidently: learn to fly, get onto plane with a knife (which they presumably experimented with beforehand), hijack plane (since existing hijacking policy was based more around "Thees plane ees going to Havana" and less on "we fly it into a landmark!"), fly it into landmark. Simple in that it did not depend on exploiting highly specific holes in security, that it did not involve mysterious strangers doing strange suspicious things to the airport ventilation, and that it did not involve security officers reacting in a specific way under strange circumstances.

This last is important. A good plan does not make assumptions about how the enemy will react, beyond the most rudimentary level. It especially does not make optimistic assumptions like "we can neutralize the security in minutes by swamping them with false positives" rather than "if they smell bomb everywhere in the airport, they will assume there's a large bomb in the airport and evacuate the building."

Still, my main card is having a friend smuggle stuff beyond the guard post, someway (the fault exploited to do so depends from the airport, and trust me, most airports I've been into have a looong list of such faults), and I go take that up after they finished my satisfactory rectum inspection.

Thing is, why are they checking your ass for bombs when your buddy could so easily sneak stuff to you past the checkpoint? Think this through. It does not make sense to obsessively examine one route by which contraband can get onto the plane while ignoring the other route, unless the goal is "security theater" and not security itself.

Especially not when examining the one route involves escalating privacy violations that humiliate the passengers, while examining the other route (controlling access to the parts of the terminal past the checkpoint) does not.

Also, I'm someone_else. Or should I have to call you Simon_Pester?

I apologize.

So your question becomes:
How can we stop the hysteria before they start looking up your ass?

As always, the real problem is far easier to solve than convince the public that it has been solved. Fukushima anyone?

Thing is, TSA security measures have generally not been created by public demand for them. They've been created by the TSA and the Bush and Obama administrations. The public tolerates it, but does not demand it, not to anything like the degree we've seen so far.

[Akhlut]

A child crying at the airport? Perish the thought!

Further,

Um wait a minute, we didn't go anywhere, all you did was mock my observation that a noisy child attracts attention, not disprove it.

If a crying child in an airport is considered just part of the background noise, who the hell is going to notice? My son cried in the airport not because he was kiestering enough C4 to blow a hole in the side of a jetliner, but because he was bored as hell and wanted to play around the concourse and terminal! You think TSA agents, who spend their entire workdays in airports, are going to be that concerned about crying children?

"Oh, look, another kid tired, bored kid who wants the fuck out of here. What-the-fuck-ever."

it's not out of the question that the walking part could be completely eliminated by faking a broken leg on the child and just move him/her around with a wheelchair.

Ok um... have you ever tried to board a plane in a wheelchair? it's more conspicuous than you would imagine.[/quote]

Okay, so it's conspicuous; so what? The TSA isn't doing rectal searches or using devices that actively search for bombs that aren't external, so why should a terrorist care about having slightly more attention since he knows he can't be caught anyway? Mohammad Atta knew he was bringing on illegal contraband to the plane to commit a terrorist act, yet he still managed to get by security with relative ease.

Anyway, bomb-dogs are very effective, with Corporal Andrew Guzman saying they are "[t]hey are 98 percent accurate. We trust these dogs more than metal detectors and mine sweepers."

Well that is not exactly a nonobjective opinion, i was looking for a third party study.
http://doglawreporter.blogspot.com/2010 ... ctive.html

here's a blog. It means nothing, but it contradicts yours.

Firstly: I'm advocating a highly mixed system so that if there is a failure in one part of the system, the other parts pick it up. If the dogs fail, then hopefully the portal-bomb-detector will catch you.

And, of course, given that we've had only three attempts to bring explosives on airplanes prior to the implementation of routine pat-downs and scanners, I think we can avoid offending other people's dignity because you're afraid of a 1/2,000,000,000 chance of someone sneaking an explosive on board a plane.


Also, shit, pat-downs and backscatter-scanners are ineffective too!

http://m.gizmodo.com/5712481/fool-the-t ... h-pancakes
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwit ... effective/

Suppose we ought to scrap them too, since you don't want ineffective measures implemented, right?

Now, if soldiers in warzones trust dogs to detect bombs and IEDs and trust them more then metal detectors and minesweepers, then I think I'd trust them to a large degree as well.

They could just as well be affectionate towards the dog.

I imagine that affection would dry up rather quickly if they were being wounded or having friends killed by IEDs the dog missed.

Plus: bomb-detection machines exist and can be very effective. I do not know how fast they are, though. If they're quick, though, a combination of dogs and machines can virtually eliminate the possibility of explosives and the addition of metal detectors would make it much more difficult to get guns or knives onboard an airplane.

See you beat me to raising the obvious flaws. I can handle my own damn argument thank you

The scanners can be fooled, these machines wouldn't be fooled by any configuration you put the explosives in. So, would you rather be actually safe from an explosive and take longer to get on the plane, or would you rather have a false sense of security from the faster yet far less effective scanner?

All without needing patdowns or backscatter scanners that make people feel a hell of a lot more violated than walking through what appear to be doorways and having a dog sniff around them.

Nothing makes people vigilant like reminding them the kid kicking their seat might have a bomb up his ass. makign security as intrusive and obvious as possible has it's own merits, or do you think police officers pull people over in awkward places to slow down traffic is just a coincidence. it's typically a "Slow Down Fucker, This Could Be You."

And what do you propose doing to the kid who may potentially have a bomb inside him? Cavity searches for all passengers? Yep, that's not a violation of basic human rights or dignity at all, nosiree!

[aerius]

Still, smuggling stuff on board has never been overtly complex if you have some ingenuity, time and money.
Closing all the easy holes would require much more thought than the TSA currently shows.
Closing all the holes would require too much money and a complete redesign of most airports.

Like with a friend that bypasses the guards by walking around the building, and gives you whatever you wanted to carry onboard after the check-in. Dunno how good guards are in the US, but here it's an easy trick.

Try that at my airport and you'll have the police and CBSA officers all over you so fast that it wouldn't be funny.

Or the people that mop the building's floors can hide stuff for you in a position after the guards (like bathrooms).

Anyway, this would require a relocation of the guard posts in a place just before going on the aircraft to be busted.

Even then, maybe the aircraft resupply personnel can still smuggle stuff in the aircraft for you.

Doesn't work that way. You think the airport workers just waltz into work every day?

And c'mon you about stuffing children with explosives, it's relatively easier to have the subject swallow small balls of explosive, like they do to smuggle drugs around. One of the balls contains the detonator, and the other balls will simpathetically detonate when reached by the first ball's shockwave.
Cover them with sugar and it will be relatively easy to turn even other people's childrens into walking bombs by handing out such things as candies.

Detonators show up on x-rays. They might set off metal detectors as well. Ain't gonna work.

And what about fooling dogs and machines?
You fill the airport's ventilation system with powdered explosives (or place them in the stuff used to mop the floors, or make sure there is loads of such smell around in some other way) and laugh when the dogs sniff explosives everywhere and become useless.

Doesn't work that way. I can't tell you why, but let's put it this way; we have flights coming in from various places where half the passengers reek of pot, the drug dogs will still hit on the smugglers.

[LaCroix]

I'd like to know what professionals will do in case all dogs sniff explosives everywhere. Without hindsight telling the real cause. (like that guy in the first posts of this thread)

Assumed you manage to do so:

Dog handlers would usually do something like this:

1. Distract the dog, start again.
2.a. Try other locations.
2.b. Scratch head.
3. Bring in another dog.
4. Try second dog in various locations.
5. Evacuate, because there are traces of explosives all over the airport which just CAN'T be mere coincidence. Two dogs giving false positives is nearly impossible.
(Control ventilation system first - traces everywhere means that it was spread, and an AC is the most plausible reason, instead of a terrorist carrying a 'leaking' bomb all around the airport.)

[Akhlut]

Aerius, I know you're probably unable to tell me specifics for various reasons about security, NDA, and the like, but would you say your Canadian airports are just as safe as our American ones without resorting to the insanity of backscatter scanners and pat-downs? Surely you have ways of detecting bombs and finding weapons that don't resort to such measures? And the Canadian security apparatus is nearly as effective, if not moreso, than the US security apparatus at airports, correct?

[aerius]

Safer. We have better trained workers & procedures.

[Broomstick]

I also hear you guys let your people use their brains.

Really, the US seems to want an all-purpose algorithm and never permit the bio-robots people to deviate from them. Problem is, there's always the unexpected situation, the unforeseen strategy, and so forth that operates outside the algorithm. And the computers/machines/SOP will never catch it. Humans might, though, we're much better at dealing with the unexpected and the not-quite-right than our machines are.

They're trying to make the machines fill the human role (catch the odd event), and the humans fill the machine role (routine searches).

[Simon_Jester]

Use of brains is why I don't think someone_else's scheme for security bypasses, or anything like it, is practical. Even people who are paid to follow procedures like mindless bio-robots have instincts; the impulse to secure our territory and spot out-of-place factors that might threaten it is buried animal-deep. Plans that rely heavily on defeating specific security measures through exotic strategems generally put themselves at risk of triggering those instincts.

Which isn't a good move; the last words any would-be infiltrator wants to hear from a security guard are "Hmm. That's funny..." Trying to get through security by distracting them depends on their response to the distraction, and if they've got any brains at all, presenting them with something unusual is a great way to get them to rise to the challenge by looking for other unusual threats.
___________

Also...

[WARNING: off-topic wild speculation follows]

Broomstick's remarks remind me of something I once heard, from... someone, I forget who, on this site.

About 'Americans know how to take orders.'

It's ironic because we like to think of ourselves as Free Men and whatnot, but the more I think about it the more sense it makes. There's a vein in American culture, the culture of rulership more so than the popular culture, that descends through the industrial economy, efficiency experts, Taylorism and Fordism, and so on into the modern cubicle farm. Which does revolve around giving people extremely detailed orders to carry out and making them do it just so, with the brain more or less switched off. That's been going on at least since 1900, too.

To get really speculative about it, I'd blame the tendency on the fact that our 'rulership culture' doesn't have any component from pre-industrial times. Most countries have collective memory of being ruled by aristocrats, who have their own notions of rights and duties, on the one hand looking down on the peasants and on the other having at least some notion of noblesse oblige. And that permeates the collective memory of the people running the place today: the underlings may be peasants, but they're people, not cogs in a machine.

The US... well, for us, the rulership culture comes from corporate executives, politicians, and technocrats. All of whom are more prone to view masses of people as raw material to be manipulated than as independent individuals in their own right. Combine that with a strong anti-socialist movement* discouraging the American worker from viewing themselves as anything more than a subordinate agent of their employer so long as they're on the job, and it's easy for that attitude to spread.

Which is not to say we don't see this elsewhere in the world, too; there are plenty of countries where the traditions of technocracy-by-management are stronger than the tradition of noblesse oblige and the idea of society as a contract between classes. But the US strikes me as an odd, and ironic, place for that to evolve...

I don't know. Maybe I just hit the wrong balance of sleep and caffeine today.

*And doesn't "antisocial-ist" sound like an alarming name for an ideology now that I think about it...

[someone_else]

Thing is, there's no evidence whatsoever that it increases security

I think we both agree on this.
What I wonder is "does it increase the pubblic's perception of being protected?"
Because it's the only slightly redeeming reason for such invasive nonsense.

Terrorists are back to bombing airplanes, which means the threat is to the people in the plane, not to the people on the ground.

So, even this reason for so harsh controls is busted.

Thing is, why are they checking your ass for bombs when your buddy could so easily sneak stuff to you past the checkpoint? Think this through. It does not make sense to obsessively examine one route by which contraband can get onto the plane while ignoring the other route, unless the goal is "security theater" and not security itself.

That's exactly the point. In the airports I've been, there were open doors leading to the outside of the building in multiple areas. Unguarded (there were a couple guys on patrol, but yeah, not a big deal) and with no cameras looking at them. And you could easily bypass the checkpoints with that.

They enforced the "no shoes" rule and the "no liquids out of the three clear 100ml bottles in a clear plastic bag" rule. And the usual metal detector pass plus x-ray for the hand baggage.
No dogs in sight, and the real baggage (the one that goes in the aircraft's belly) wasn't controlled either (one of my classmates had loads of pot in his one).

What we were more or less expecting, happened when one of our group's baggages was lost for unknown reasons. It turned up a week or so later forced open, all the cash "removed".

But those were not US airports. Here security seems to be very very very relaxed. Or they have too little money for guards and dogs.

Thing is, TSA security measures have generally not been created by public demand for them. They've been created by the TSA and the Bush and Obama administrations.

So it is someone in those administations that is so hysterical. Difficult to change his mind, methinks

Try that at my airport and you'll have the police and CBSA officers all over you so fast that it wouldn't be funny.

It's nice to know you don't have so huge security holes. It's not that I think I can single-handedly smuggle nukes on aircrafts with my Uber Ninja Powers (TM), it's that I've been in airports with no security personnel other than those at the checkpoints and a couple patrolling guys, and open doors everywhere.

Doesn't work that way. You think the airport workers just waltz into work every day?

Do you scan all the containers with stuff to resupply the aircraft too (water, foodstuff, random other things)? That's another gaping hole I saw here. Trucks (like this) going and coming from the street carrying stuff directly to aircraft, 0 controls.
(my aircraft sat there for a hour or so awaiting the clearance, and I saw such trucks come and go from its window, from the pubblic street to the airport and none did any control other than looking at the driver)

Detonators show up on x-rays. They might set off metal detectors as well. Ain't gonna work.

Do you routinely x-ray people? You can try telling them the child has swallowed a metal botton or somesuch if metal detector detect it.

The remote is a very simle thing, you hide it in a laptop or other thing with circuitry. Or hell, send the signal to detonate it with the laptop's Wi-fi antenna.

Doesn't work that way. I can't tell you why, but let's put it this way; we have flights coming in from various places where half the passengers reek of pot, the drug dogs will still hit on the smugglers.

Oh. My respect for drug/explosive dogs just skyrocketed.