New TSA Security Procedures

[David Alexander]

This particular tunnel was BIG BUSINESS as it was nearly a half-mile long and professionally constructed. Tons of marijuana was seized. With the border getting tighter the drug cartels are looking at more expensive and imaginative ways of bringing product to market. Some in South America have built submarines for one-way smuggling trips.

Whats really scary is that we have no way of knowing what else (or who else) was brought through the tunnel while it was operational.

[Jim Maloney]

Did they catch Nancy Botwin? ;)

[David Alexander]

Jim Maloney asked, "Did they catch Nancy Botwin?"

As long as Nancy produces good ratings for Showtime I suspect she'll be safe from the law. That and she probably has renewal clauses in her contract that will keep her out of prison for at least another season or two.

She would probably find prison better than cancellation.

[Terry]

Kevin - the Portland thing was a set up over several months. The feds supplied him with phony explosives and arrested him as he tried to use a cell phone to detonate.

[Kevin Connolly]

Yes, I read the story. Still a good catch to find the mutt and then neuter him.

I hear Gitmo is nice this time of the year. :)

[conjuringbooks]

Nine years ago I ran down a street in lower manhattan hopelessly trying to avoid an oncoming snake of debris and escape the chaos. I ended up walking 15 miles home covered in soot wondering the whole time which of my friends weren't as lucky...

A pat-down or semi-nude photo is a small price to pay to help avoid the atrocities we all witnessed that day. My only surprise is that it's taken us 9 years to institute to these obvious screening procedures. To echo an earlier comment, if you don't like them - choose not to fly.

[Jim Maloney]

hypec said "A pat-down or semi-nude photo is a small price to pay to help avoid the atrocities we all witnessed that day."

There seems to be an assumption that either we implement those two options, or we have a massive security hole. That's simply not true. Ben Gurion National Airport in Israel, which is widely regarded as one of the most secure in the world, uses neither. Interestingly, they've managed to gain a reputation for both high security and customer friendliness. Why are we unable to learn lessons from them?

-Jim

[Kevin Connolly]

I would like the US to use the Israel model, but there is a drawback why it can't be used here. Israel may have 200 or so flights per day. The USA is about 30,000 per day. We would have left for the airport last week to get on the plane tomorrow.

[Bill Duncan]

Still, if we employed the same model as Israel, we'd have 100% employment in a couple of years...

A quarter of the country would be working for the TSA, and tickets would cost a fortune, but whatever.

[conjuringbooks]

Afraid "Israel's model" is no magic bullet either.

Many passengers to/from Israel are similairly groped. I've experienced it first-hand myself. Try Washington Post's recent article:
http://www.jpost.com/Business/BusinessN ... 94762&R=R9

They began with my hair, even though it is only two centimeters long. They began feeling through it, then examining behind my ears, the neck, the shoulders. They began feeling me under my bra, and then continued on to my tummy. I felt as though I was under a sexual assault...

And many in Israel believe their security needs to be tougher:
http://www.jpost.com/Business/BusinessN ... 94762&R=R9

[Magic Newswire]

Then there's the ongoing story of that crazy woman who wanted to keep her breast milk from going through xray. Shame on her! Doesn't she know that she's just a citizen of Gitmo Nation? How dare she ask for them to follow their own regulations for handling such issues!

An as to the Irsaeli model, no one thinks it would work here given the number of domestic flights that we handle every day

[Magic Newswire]

4th Amendment Underwear : "When Unwarranted Searches Go Too Far: http://bit.ly/hPbYO9

[Jonathan Townsend]

Can you get them written in other languages?

[David Alexander]

So some drone sitting in front of the screen sees the "protest," decides he can't see beneath the wording and calls out for an intrusive and especially vigorous pat-down for the tenth clown he sees wearing that underwear.

[David Alexander]

A bit more on the TSA's spending of our tax dollars:

http://www.gadling.com/2008/11/22/tsas- ... -the-time/

Gun accidentally carried on plane, missed by TSA:

http://www.gadling.com/2010/01/14/tsa-f ... placed-by/

Two years old but who knows if this is still going on:

http://www.gadling.com/2008/10/16/yet-a ... nd-badges/

Evidently taking stuff OUT of the airport was easier than taking stuff in...a LOT of stuff:

http://www.gadling.com/2008/10/10/tsa-a ... -and-more/

Here's a follow-up as the thief had the balls to ask to leave the country for his honeymoon.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/1 ... r_new.html

[Smurf]

"A pat-down or semi-nude photo is a small price to pay to help avoid the atrocities we all witnessed that day."

Not turning over the plane to terrorists is all it takes to avoid those atrocities. The new policy and doors on the cockpit are all that is needed.

Also, I don't think any future planeful of passengers is going to sit there while someone tries to do something like that again. Some didn't even put up with it then, but in the future I am pretty sure there would be active resistance on every plane.

As some have brought up here, this is a clear violation of the 4th amendment, unless you have a post-graduate degree from somewhere which allows you to rationialize that all airplane passengers are exempt from that amendment - because of the actions of some terrorists.

The small prices that the government requires for your safety may become an enormous total in the future.

[Bill Palmer]

I haven't said anything about this on any of the forums; however, unless you have flown during the past 3 weeks or so, you don't even have a clue as to what's going on in the airports.

Security tightened down quite heavily on November 10, which was the day that my wife and I flew up to Boston for NEMCA. Those of you who know me are aware that I am somewhat rotund. In fact, I have a badly repaired hernia that causes my belly to bulge in a rather odd fashion.

I've never had a problem with airport security before, other than having my suspenders ring the bells.

This time, when I went through, I was asked to go through the scanner. That's not a problem for me. The problem occurred when I was then forced to go through a manual search. I've been patted down before. This was no "pat down." The bastard grabbed my stomach and kneaded it like I had swallowed a four pound glob of Semtex or something. He actually caused one of my suspender clips to come loose. My stomach area still hurts from that rough handling. They also pinched my boarding pass, which was under one of my shoes in one of the trays. They said it had "fallen out." Fallen out, my ass! They thought they had a smuggler on their hands.

On the way back to Houston, I had no problem at all. I debated whether to issue a complaint, but since I plan to fly again next year, I think I'll let this slide.

[Jonathan Townsend]

Yes David, especially if that protest is written in Arabic.