New Flight Security Rules Keep You Safely in Seat, Wetting Pants

Answer: you give up your clothes at check-in for an airline issued paper jumpsuit. speeds up security and provides ad-space for the revenue strapped airlines...

can't wait till someone pees in their pants, and a lawsuit is born

Some substantial minority of women get breast cancer so we can approach choices about screening for that with some vague likelihood of success.

In the case of terrorism, it's minute fractions of a single percent of people that are terrorists. So if you base searches on simple "statistics" ("most of recent air bombers have had some relationships to Islam") you're still going to be way way way off in whatever conclusion you reach. Say the error rate of your searches are 10% and you search 10% of 1,000,000 people who you *think* are young muslim men, among which 1 is a terrorist. You search 100,000 people, you detain 10,000 and spend money on that, and you only have a 1 in 10 chance - AT MOST - of catching the terrorist. You have, on average, 0.1 successes and 10,000 errors per million visitors. And as a bonus, you're discriminating against bases on skin color and religion with little effect. Nice.

That's why fighting terrorism with these random searches is bogus. The money should be spent on pursuing terrorits in the wild, and *behaviour-based profiling* in airports. Travelling one-way, paying in cash, and other activities should result in greater scrutiny. With highly trained people, who we pay well, doing the scrutiny. Not underpaid TSA staffers. Plus quality vetting of don't fly lists and tips, not piling every name in there and not doing follow-up to investigate and either clear or apprehend people.

While I have nothing good to say about the Fucking Transportation Security Administration (FTSA), I do have an answer for those of us who do need to fly. Let's call it a loophole, a way to bring some pleasure back to flying and a way to get around these rules.

I say we each declare ourselves Heads of States or Heads of Governments:

To wit:

2. During the boarding process, the air carrier may exempt passengers who are Heads of State or Heads of Government from the measures outlined in Section I.A. of this SD, including the following who are traveling with the Head of State or Head of Government:

1. Spouse and children, or

2. One other individual (chosen by the Head of State or Head of Government)

3. For the purposes of Section I.B., the following definitions apply:

1. Head of State: An individual serving as the chief public representative of a monarchic or republican nation-state, federation, commonwealth, or any other political state (for example, King, Queen, and President).

2. Head of Government: The chief officer of the executive branch of a government presiding over a cabinet (for example, Prime Minister, Premier, President, and Monarch). ~ Security Directive SD 1544-09-06 Date: December 25, 2009

Why would they turn off the television. Sitting in my apartment for 10 minutes in silence makes me homicidal. I wonder what the TSA's reaction would be if I just walked in for a flight in my underwear and save them all the damn trouble. "Look officer. They were just going to have me take off my pants anyway. I was just expediting my departure."

I am all for traveling just in my boxers and a tank top.

If the US government doesn't want people to get up during the flight, sedate everyone.

Sex: Check.

Age: Check.

Religion: Check.

This isn't calculus.

Should we give 8 year-old boys mammograms at the same rate as older women to detect cancer fairly?

Sex: Check.

Age: Check.

Relegion: Check.

This isn't calculus.

Should we give 8 year=old boys mammograms at the same rate as older women to detect cancer fairly?

Body scanners huh?

Note to self: Do not rock elephant thong on day of travel.

international or domestic, first hour or last, wtf is the difference?

Just spend the money on the body scanners already! The technology is available, use it. Stop being so damn cheap.

I'd feel worse about this if my G-IV was out for repairs.

American carriers have slashed pay and dumped pension plans while assuring their employees they have no future. It's just a matter of time until terrorists pay off a disgruntled employee to put a bomb on a plane.

So what will airlines do for pregnant women on their flights? It's dangerous for a pregnant woman to sit still on a plane for that long, because of the danger of blood clots. You have to get up and stretch and move around a little every hour or so. Are airlines willing to risk potential deaths of women for this backwards "security measure"?

And this won't stop any real terrorist, who could easily find a way to detonate a device while, you know, SITTING. The only logical step is to strap passengers down and sedate them for the duration of the flight. And they're dumb enough to try it, I'm sure.

I have extra scorn for the TSA now after 1) having things stolen from our luggage by TSA employees and 2) having a cup of yogurt taken from me at JFK, when I was 5 months pregnant, with the excuse that "We don't let people bring gelatin onto planes". Yogurt, Semtex, who knows the difference? Who cares? Anyone who takes food from a pregnant woman has a special place in hell waiting for them. I curse those two men forever, and I hope they have very mean wives.

Looks like traveling with kids will become even more of a nightmare for all parties. Does this mean no toys, etc. for kids on planes? My year old baby is an excellent air traveler, but certainly needs some toys, blankie and/or tv to get through the final hour. (And for everyone who will say we shouldn't be on a plane with a baby, we are flying to visit ailing grandparents who live across the country and fly at dawn so the wee one sleeps as much as possible.)

Awwwww, look at the little homeyopt, all afwaid of the big bad terrorists. Poor wittle baby, do you need someone to hold your hand?

I was convinced that my friend A. wrote comment #11, mainly for the line, "You can't keep shanks out of prison, and you can't keep weapons off of planes."

Turns out he did not, but he contributed something worthy of tossing into the discussion:

"But it's true that life can never be made wholly safe. And there's no systemic way to stop the destruction of a plane by a guy who's willing to go down with it. That's not rocket science. I think in the modern US we believe life can & should be wholly safe, so maybe the government can't just be straight with us about that, & so unfortunately they have to devise policies to pretend to stop an unstoppable event. Fortunately there's only so many people who want to kill themselves to score a political point (or who want to kill themselves period & find the political arena a convenient one in which to do it)."

And the terrorists get to laugh some more. They don't have to kill people to win. They just have to shackle Western-style freedom. TSA is playing right into their hands.

"(Particularly an incident where the TSA looked bad.)"

"this guy got on the plane because the TSA couldn't enforce the rules already in place"

Both miss the mark, because the TSA played no role in screening the flight into Detroit. There've been contradicting reports on whether the guy did or did not have to go through screening in Amsterdam where he transferred onto the plane; his trip originated in Nigeria. In either case, the TSA runs passenger screening only on flights originating in the US.

In fact, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam was among the first to adopt the latest body scan technology. That probably would be the only way that might have caught his technique -- a condom filled with powder sewn inside his underwear.

The dude was reported by his own father as a terrorist -- he shouldn't have been on a plane to the U.S. Even the head of Homeland Security said that the system "failed miserably."

Now, maybe your point is that some other division of Homeland Security is responsible for the failure, rather than TSA. If so...alright, it's a different division of bozos trying not to look bad. That's a touch pedantic, but I'll grant it to you.

No, my point is simply that TSA has nothing to do with screening on an international flight coming into the country. Neither does any other part of DHS.

"The system" which failed is the entire system of international flight security. The Dutch Anti-Terrorism Coordinator is taking heat on that end; his agency had responsibility for security on that flight -- not TSA.

DHS and TSA don't conduct the actual physical screen, but they do restrict who can and cannot be granted a boarding pass for flights on U.S. carriers or flights arriving in or leaving from the U.S. The Dutch may have blown the patdown, but DHS also definitely screwed up letting this guy on board to start with.

"they do restrict who can and cannot be granted a boarding pass"

Really? You think carriers submit a list to the TSA before boarding passes are issued? Uh... no. Pay your fare; you get a boarding pass. Then carry that along with your passport and visa, and you can board. Tens of thousands of people do it every day.

There's only one point at which a US agency could have prevented this from happening: when he was issued a visa for entry. Reportedly, though, his visa was issued before he was placed on a watch list.

I think what you're looking for is the so-called "Secure Flight" program (described in 49 CFR 1560). In it, yes, the carriers submit a person's information to the TSA before a boarding pass is issued, and the TSA tells the carrier whether or not to issue the pass. It's what's sometimes called the "no fly list" or "watch list," and by law it applies both to U.S. carriers and flights leaving from or arriving in the U.S.

So, yeah, that really is how it is supposed to work -- and how it failed to work here.

SecureFlight isn't yet fully implemented. From the lastest press release:

"TSA's goal is to vet 100 percent of passengers on all domestic commercial flights by early 2010 and 100 percent of passengers on all international commercial flights into, out of, or over the U.S. by the end of 2010."

http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2009/0812.shtm

Not yet working even on all domestic flights, and not expected to be for all international flights until about a year from now. Assuming, of course, implementation doesn't run behind schedule.

Prior to Secure Flight it is the responsibility of the airline to check their passenger list against the "no fly" list provided by the TSA. Secure Flight simply transfers the responsibility of checking from the airlines to the TSA. So to say that the TSA had no part in preventing passengers from boarding aircraft is not accurate.

And by the way, Abdulmutallab was not on either a no-fly or additional screening list. If Secure Flight was in operation on that flight, he wouldn't have been stopped from boarding.

So perhaps that's a "failure," but at this point it appears to be only a failure to predict the future since there's apparently no terrorist activity in his past.

Yes, Secure Flight is still being rolled out, so there is some chance that the carrier may still be checking the TSA no-fly list itself, rather than TSA checking the list directly. Either way, if he is on the TSA's list, he cannot by law be issued a boarding pass. So why wasn't he on the list?

Your new argument is that he shouldn't have been on the watchlist to begin with because, come on, what'd he really do? Talked about blowing some things up? Went on some crazy rants about the great Satan? Walked around looking for his stapler while saying "I could burn this place down?" Hey, that's what I call a Tuesday.

No, this guy was a credible threat and we didn't take it seriously. That's a mistake, but it happens and we learn from it. It is just one more assurance that life is unpredictable and cannot be made to be anything else. The smart reaction is to learn from the mistake, not to pretend it didn't happen or to just blindly act.

Instead we're coming up with additional security theater to play political CYA with. And that's just dumb.

Actually, that's exactly what happens.

http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/secureflight/

They're wasting our time with these new measures. If they're going to add new ones when will they add all Muslims & people who have recently visited Muslim countries to a list? Why not just make it simple, unfair to many, but simple. Let Qaeda stick their heads out of the ground trying to recruit people outside of that profile. It'd be a good chance to catch more of them.

Why can't people grow the fuck up ? Stupid bitch doesn't know how to use bathroom before she boards flight, or not drink a 64 oz Super Size coke in terminal, or use on-flight restroom before the last hour when they shut it down ?

Complaining ass bitches...

I know, right? I mean, we're all adults -- what's the concern with being strip-searched and anally probed on the jetway? It's not going to kill you. And don't give me that "deep vein thrombosis" bullshit about the leg irons -- if you aren't healthy enough to fly, then you should stay home.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're an American, you demand freedom, yadayadayada. Give me a break. If you didn't want to submit to a blood and urine test every time you flew home to see your parents, you shouldn't have moved! Stupid childish people.

Oh, I forgot...they should automatically know that YOU are not a terrorist...how could you be, you read Gothamist !

Face the facts fucktard, the world has changed. If you don't like the rules that are in place at the airports, there's always Amtrak.

You're right, the world has changed. Even if we were to remove all security from airplanes, we'd be safer now than at any time in history -- whether from wars, disease, or any other cause of death. We live longer, and we live better. Yet for some reason we also live more scared, and in particular more scared of this one particular way to die. Why? Because "OMG the Terrorists!!!!1!!"

We should be more scared of car crashes -- almost seven times more people die of car crashes in the U.S. every year than died on 9/11. But something about the combination of planes and scary terrorists makes us, well, terrified. (This only seems to apply to planes. They bombed a train, too -- but you can still walk onto any train in Grand Central carrying a suitcase full of dynamite and a duffel bag full of AK-47s. Go figure.)

The kicker, of course, is that this was the whole goal of the terrorists -- to make us so scared that we act like horrified little children who will surrender our way of life in the vain hopes of making the bad man go away. And we do.

These rules make no sense. Wouldn't it be wiser to make sure people can't get a bomb onto the plane in the first place? It seems once they've gotten a bomb or weapon onto an airplane, no amount of in flight rules are going to do much to increase safety.

This is miserable. I fly for work at least twice a month, and having my laptop to work or watch movies is the only thing that makes it bearable. You can't even have a book? What a sham.

One of the new rules it to "3. Disable aircraft-integrated passenger communications systems and services (phone, internet access services, live television programming, global positioning systems) prior to boarding and during all phases of flight."

So, no contact with the outside world whatsoever. Great.

I don't quite understand why live television wouldn't be allowed, but I wonder if a compromise would be to build a delay into the system, so that the tv's on the plane are xx minutes behind the live feed.

In airspace, no one can hear you scream?

Invasive, knee-jerk, depressing, and most of all useless. You can't keep shanks out of prison, and you can't keep weapons off of planes. All this does is add another layer of delay (which leads to pressure to skip the actually useful steps in the security process), shift the terrorist activity to another time during the flight, and de-legitimize security altogether. (And, not for nothing...this guy got on the plane because the TSA couldn't enforce the rules already in place...)

It's the de-legitimization of security that's perhaps the biggest problem. How long until a planeful of people decides that they simply aren't ok with being treated like criminals, chained to their seats, unable to even read or work on their laptops? When they do, what are the TSA spooks going to do -- arrest them all? Well, great -- now how do you sort out the people who are actual terrorists from those that simply refuse to live under an absurd system based on irrational fears? Are you really going to put all those people in jail?

Life can never be made wholly safe -- no one's making it off this planet alive. We can go through life trying absurdly to prevent every danger in the hopes of having everyone live out their full 77.5 years -- even if it means making them miserable half the time. But that's a bad idea. Life is about the freedom to decide how to spend your 77.5 years -- and giving that away in the name of "security" (or security theater) is as bad an idea as I can imagine.

Instead, let's all accept that life ends, that bad shit happens, that we cannot prevent it all -- and that there is a line beyond which we should not even TRY to prevent it all. This bullshit is way on the other side of that line, and my hope is that the American people (and the people of the world) will simply say "ok, enough -- that's way too far. You TSA guys are on your own because we're not playing these silly games anymore."

We have politically correct, diversity-obsessed morons in the government making up the rules and dimwitted burger flippers at the airports enforcing them. What could possibly go wrong?

I don't think it's the diversity-obsession that drives this problem -- but for once I almost agree with your political-driven view of the world, because these new regulations seem only slightly related to the most recent incident.

I mean, what's the difference between blowing up a plane over Detroit and blowing it up over the ocean on the way to Detroit? Why only restrict the last hour? Well, that's the thing -- if they restrict the last hour, then there's less time for a terrorist to take over the plane and fly it into something. These new regulations are therefore designed not for a bomb onboard, but for a 9/11-style attack. Ok, so why weren't these regulations in place for the last eight years, if they were necessary to prevent a 9/11 style attack?

Well, that's just the thing -- these were in the can somewhere at TSA, waiting for an "incident" to justify ratcheting up the security theater. (Particularly an incident where the TSA looked bad.) They're not necessary, and not related to the latest incident -- they're pure politics designed to let bozos in D.C. claim to be doing something.

The TSA are proving once again that they're a bunch of political hacks whose only approach to security is reactive, silly policies that have nothing to do with preventing terrorism.

For example, if a terrorist wants to blow up a plane from London to LAX over US territory, they don't need to wait till the final hour - they've got a good 4 or 5 hours before that to accomplish this task. What good does limiting movement for an hour ever accomplish? It's mind-boggling how inept and shortsighted these people are.

i'd happily fly in the nude if it makes everyone feel safer.

So um...what happens when you're flying into NYC and you get delayed and have to circle for an hour or two? You just have to anticipate not being able to take a piss for three hours?

hey. My grandma gets diarrhea often...

I guess we'll be ...smelling nasty odors on seats from now on.

And WTF wants a flight attendant to enter while one is busy? mmm...many.

Grandma will travel with different type of explosives in her knickers.

"Basically, we're just a couple more failed bombings away from flying handcuffed to the armrest, naked except for hoods over our heads. "

Fantasizing?

Read Chris Hitchens take on this.

http://www.slate.com/id/2239935/

Hitchens is 100% correct.

Whoa. The woman in the 2nd pic has a pancake ass. She needs to eat more beans.

That's a guy Kojak .

some of us are just born lucky, kojak. i bet you're an adonis.

Well, I don't like to brag...

Daft Punk caught in airport security?