The TSA is something that shouldn’t exist in its current form. They very often fail their audit checks and normalize invading your privacy to an extreme degree like body scanners and pat downs. If water bottles are considered potentially explosive then why dump them on a bin next to a line of people where they can go off? This is low grade security theater that inconveniences passengers at best.
Apart from the obvious failings of these checks, think about what kind of damage a single backpack of explosives can do to a packed airport during holiday season. You can literally put a ton of explosives on one of those trolleys, roll it into the waiting area and kill 200 people easily. No security whatsoever involved.
Reality is, most security measures are designed to keep the illusion of control. Nothing more. Penetration testers show again and again that you can easily circumvent practically all barriers or measures.
That’s what’s changed. Before, a hijacking meant a free trip to south America or Cuba. Now it means you’re likely to die if you don’t stop the hijackers. A planeful of pissed off passengers determined to live are gonna stop a would-be hijacker.
Plus the cockpit doors lock. Which can turn out to be a double-edged sword if the pilot has a breakdown and decides he wants to take everyone else with him.
Police officers are mentally ill? Interesting take.
Also, we’re talking about pilots that you are already trusting with you’re life and the lives of hundreds of people with you. If they were mentally ill they could just crash the plane and kill you.
These guys are genuinely invested in maintaining the safety of human lives.
It’s basically the only type of jobs program that both sides of our broken government can agree on: petty nonsense that looks like it might do something useful, but really doesn’t, and only inconveniences the poors.
This happened to me after a lunch break going back into the court room for jury duty. Didn’t think about my soda until I got to the checkpoint, used to the TSA’s mentality so figured the rest of it was forfeit. She just tells me to take a drink to show it’s valid. Respect for people doing their job correctly, and using common sense.
According to the story I heard as to the origin of the “no liquids over X amount” rule, years ago there was a terrorist that tried to smuggle hydrogen peroxide and acetone - which can be used to rather easily synthesize triacetone triperoxide (TATP, a highly sensitive explosive) - onto a plane in plastic toiletry bottles. They got caught and foiled somehow, and then the TSA started restricting liquids on planes. This was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, if I recall correctly.
And I happen to know, from a reliable source, of someone who accidentally made TATP in a rotary evaporator in an academic lab. So it seems plausible.
Not that the rule is actually effective prevention against similar attacks, nor that the TSA even knows what the reason is behind what they do at this point, haha. I just thought it was an interesting story.
No, acetone and peroxide, and generally a small amount of HCl as a catalyst. Makes triacetone triperoxide (TATP). It’s a primary explosive, but far too sensitive for real legitimate work. It’s primarily used by terrorist organizations because it’s easy to acquire the material and easy to make. The infamous shoe bomber had TATP in the soles of his shoes, fortunately the TATP wasn’t completely dry and that’s why he had trouble getting it to go off.
In flight, yeah totally impractical and not worth even trying.
Theoretically, if I were to attempt it, I’d get my liquids through the checkpoint, mix them together and then wait the few hours for the precipitate to fall out. Then go to the bathroom pour that through a handful of paper towels, or even some coffee filters I brought in my carry on. Then, put that into some type of confinement like a metal water bottle. Lined with paper towels to pull the last bit of moisture out of the crystals. A couple more hours later and there’s a pretty sensitive device that could be set off dropping, throwing, hitting, or whatever.
That’s a way. There’s many, many ways that someone could go about it. Also agree with the sentiment that the TSA is complete theater and doesn’t actually do much to keep anyone safe. But they’re working government jobs, getting paid ok-not great, with decent benefits and can get a retirement out of it.
The shoe bomber had what was probably good quality stuff, but he was missed his flight due to looking suspicious and being pulled for questioning, he stayed the night at the airport all the while walking around with these shoes that were hollowed out on the bottom. Probably nervous as hell and sweating all this time, plus walking through puddles and such. He managed to dampen the crystals so the next day when he got on his flight they were too desensitized to detonate.
Requires an acid catalyst for the reaction to actually proceed, but yeah, could definitely ruin your day - although a lungful of chlorine gas is nothing to sneeze at either.
The main reason why it exists is to provide jobs. The number of people who work at the TSA at every airport in every state…no representative wants to cut those jobs.
I fucking hate that this is a thing. “We can’t stop doing this useless and/or detrimental thing, look at all the work it makes for other people to do!!!” Absolutely bonkers that it’s just a standard political argument.
“the idea of having more than those who have nothing is the very only reason shareholders can ever imagine someone would work for at all, thus they also falsely believe they would do something good when enforcing this by removing everything from those who already are vulnerable and thus create a living example of how you would end when you don’t help them rob even more.”
What’s wild is that if you replaced them with a single payer system or whatever else, you would still have a lot of bureaucratic work that needs to get done by the new system, so most if not all of those jobs would still exist - they would just shift from trying to deny people care to trying to connect people to care.
Here in the states when we say “medical insurance shouldn’t exist” what we mean is “the medical insurance industry shouldn’t exist”
Basically the cluster fuck of insurance companies we have now shouldn’t exist, we should just have a single payer type system where medical expenses are paid for through our tax dollars. In its current state it’s a nightmare to deal with.
A lot of private insurance in the US amounts to paying a couple hundred monthly to have the insurance and then they deny payment for basically anything and everything. So you pay them to pay out of pocket anyway.
Just got state insurance which covers everything, but very few offices accept it.
So yeah. Insurance in the US is super fucked up and people go without healthcare, even if they have insurance because they simply can’t afford it.
Yeah I guess the kind of Single Payer model I prefer can be conceptualised as “insurance.” But it feels more like health care is taxpayer funded. The similarity to insurance is just details for the detail nerds.
I mean if a state removed the TSA and spent the money on something else, surely they could use the money to create as many jobs as they removed but in an actual useful field.
I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but I wouldn’t vote for a republican who got me a job, and I probably wouldn’t vote for anyone who got rid of my job (unless they were otherwise really great). So at least for me, getting rid of the job means you lose my vote and replacing it doesn’t necessarily gain my vote.
No, it’d be more useful just on account of the harm they are not doing. I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do instead, hell, do a huge UBI experiment and just let them chill. Might as well.
If it’s just for the jobs we can put them to work doing something useful like carrying bags for old people in the airport. Literally anything would be more useful.
To be fair a explosion in a on the side of a line not gonna kill anyone, now a explosion in the airplane windows, maybe?, i get their argument, not that’s a good argument
The TSA is something that shouldn’t exist in its current form. They very often fail their audit checks and normalize invading your privacy to an extreme degree like body scanners and pat downs. If water bottles are considered potentially explosive then why dump them on a bin next to a line of people where they can go off? This is low grade security theater that inconveniences passengers at best.
It’s security theater through and through.
Apart from the obvious failings of these checks, think about what kind of damage a single backpack of explosives can do to a packed airport during holiday season. You can literally put a ton of explosives on one of those trolleys, roll it into the waiting area and kill 200 people easily. No security whatsoever involved.
Reality is, most security measures are designed to keep the illusion of control. Nothing more. Penetration testers show again and again that you can easily circumvent practically all barriers or measures.
The goal is not to stop the people in the queue being attacked, its to stop someone boarding a plane with the means to hijack it
They fail gloriously at at that too.
Whenever they get tested the red teams manage to smuggle in everything needed to hijiack a plane plus a kitchen sink.
The few times that terrorists tried to board planes, they made it through security and were caught by other passengers.
That’s what’s changed. Before, a hijacking meant a free trip to south America or Cuba. Now it means you’re likely to die if you don’t stop the hijackers. A planeful of pissed off passengers determined to live are gonna stop a would-be hijacker.
Plus the cockpit doors lock. Which can turn out to be a double-edged sword if the pilot has a breakdown and decides he wants to take everyone else with him.
Not if he has a bomb though
The Shoe Bomber and the Underwear Bomber don’t count? :)
True, although those seemed like pretty seriously incompetent attempts
Yeah, and you don’t need the TSA for that. Just do as they already do: lock the cockpit.
Little known fact: many of the pilots behind those locked doors are armed as well.
The Flight Deck Officer program allows pilots to volunteer to become deputized Air Marshals. They receive training and are issued a badge and a gun.
Good guy with a gun, we’re not mentally ill at all !
So police officers are mentally ill? Interesting take.
Yes, they think they’re the good guys.
Police officers are mentally ill? Interesting take.
Also, we’re talking about pilots that you are already trusting with you’re life and the lives of hundreds of people with you. If they were mentally ill they could just crash the plane and kill you.
These guys are genuinely invested in maintaining the safety of human lives.
They should continue focusing on that instead of gun politics and their farcical contrived scenarios to have guns on a civil plane.
They had to do something about the plague of people hijacking planes with bottles of water.
IIRC water happens to appear similarly to a lot of explosives on the metric they use for what the composition of items in the scanner is.
Improvements are being made though so soon we may be allowed to take water through unrestricted:
Why Airport Security Suddenly Got Better (13:01) https://youtu.be/nyG8XAmtYeQ?si=RTjA8GRuZaMIJs9d
Ah yes, it’s okay if we die, just don’t take the corporate infrastructure with you when you go…
It’s basically the only type of jobs program that both sides of our broken government can agree on: petty nonsense that looks like it might do something useful, but really doesn’t, and only inconveniences the poors.
Ouch, owie, my democracy
The main reason that rule still exists is to sell overpriced water. Otherwise they could just ask you to drink some of it to prove it’s water.
you are allowed to take empty bottles with you, just saying
Some airports have no place to refill and have only hot water in the toilet sinks. It’s inhumane.
Which airport? I have never ever experienced this.
I can’t remember which one it was. Maybe Munich?
Munich has refilling stations after security
I don’t remember, and it was some time ago. Lately some airports have indeed been installing water refilling stations which is great.
This happened to me after a lunch break going back into the court room for jury duty. Didn’t think about my soda until I got to the checkpoint, used to the TSA’s mentality so figured the rest of it was forfeit. She just tells me to take a drink to show it’s valid. Respect for people doing their job correctly, and using common sense.
According to the story I heard as to the origin of the “no liquids over X amount” rule, years ago there was a terrorist that tried to smuggle hydrogen peroxide and acetone - which can be used to rather easily synthesize triacetone triperoxide (TATP, a highly sensitive explosive) - onto a plane in plastic toiletry bottles. They got caught and foiled somehow, and then the TSA started restricting liquids on planes. This was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, if I recall correctly.
And I happen to know, from a reliable source, of someone who accidentally made TATP in a rotary evaporator in an academic lab. So it seems plausible.
Not that the rule is actually effective prevention against similar attacks, nor that the TSA even knows what the reason is behind what they do at this point, haha. I just thought it was an interesting story.
So there are worse cleaning chemicals to mix than bleach and vinegar
I believe you’re mixing up acetone with acetic acid
No, acetone and peroxide, and generally a small amount of HCl as a catalyst. Makes triacetone triperoxide (TATP). It’s a primary explosive, but far too sensitive for real legitimate work. It’s primarily used by terrorist organizations because it’s easy to acquire the material and easy to make. The infamous shoe bomber had TATP in the soles of his shoes, fortunately the TATP wasn’t completely dry and that’s why he had trouble getting it to go off.
Dry ? How is anyone going to dry this much liquid to make an actually dangerous amount of explosive while on a plane and not getting detected ?
Sounds highly implausible
In flight, yeah totally impractical and not worth even trying.
Theoretically, if I were to attempt it, I’d get my liquids through the checkpoint, mix them together and then wait the few hours for the precipitate to fall out. Then go to the bathroom pour that through a handful of paper towels, or even some coffee filters I brought in my carry on. Then, put that into some type of confinement like a metal water bottle. Lined with paper towels to pull the last bit of moisture out of the crystals. A couple more hours later and there’s a pretty sensitive device that could be set off dropping, throwing, hitting, or whatever.
That’s a way. There’s many, many ways that someone could go about it. Also agree with the sentiment that the TSA is complete theater and doesn’t actually do much to keep anyone safe. But they’re working government jobs, getting paid ok-not great, with decent benefits and can get a retirement out of it.
The shoe bomber had what was probably good quality stuff, but he was missed his flight due to looking suspicious and being pulled for questioning, he stayed the night at the airport all the while walking around with these shoes that were hollowed out on the bottom. Probably nervous as hell and sweating all this time, plus walking through puddles and such. He managed to dampen the crystals so the next day when he got on his flight they were too desensitized to detonate.
Requires an acid catalyst for the reaction to actually proceed, but yeah, could definitely ruin your day - although a lungful of chlorine gas is nothing to sneeze at either.
The main reason why it exists is to provide jobs. The number of people who work at the TSA at every airport in every state…no representative wants to cut those jobs.
I fucking hate that this is a thing. “We can’t stop doing this useless and/or detrimental thing, look at all the work it makes for other people to do!!!” Absolutely bonkers that it’s just a standard political argument.
Agreed. I’d rather they be paid that wage NOT to bother me.
so, we pay more (fastpass or whatever it is) for the privilege. 😅
Same thing with medical insurance. It shouldn’t exist but it pays a lot of people’s salaries.
The worst part is if people only worked two or three days a week corporations would still be profitable and everyone would have a job.
i once heared something like this:
“the idea of having more than those who have nothing is the very only reason shareholders can ever imagine someone would work for at all, thus they also falsely believe they would do something good when enforcing this by removing everything from those who already are vulnerable and thus create a living example of how you would end when you don’t help them rob even more.”
What’s wild is that if you replaced them with a single payer system or whatever else, you would still have a lot of bureaucratic work that needs to get done by the new system, so most if not all of those jobs would still exist - they would just shift from trying to deny people care to trying to connect people to care.
It shouldn’t exist? I’d like to see you pay for your medical expenses out of pocket.
P. S. No, I am not American.
Here in the states when we say “medical insurance shouldn’t exist” what we mean is “the medical insurance industry shouldn’t exist”
Basically the cluster fuck of insurance companies we have now shouldn’t exist, we should just have a single payer type system where medical expenses are paid for through our tax dollars. In its current state it’s a nightmare to deal with.
A lot of private insurance in the US amounts to paying a couple hundred monthly to have the insurance and then they deny payment for basically anything and everything. So you pay them to pay out of pocket anyway.
Just got state insurance which covers everything, but very few offices accept it.
So yeah. Insurance in the US is super fucked up and people go without healthcare, even if they have insurance because they simply can’t afford it.
Yeah I guess the kind of Single Payer model I prefer can be conceptualised as “insurance.” But it feels more like health care is taxpayer funded. The similarity to insurance is just details for the detail nerds.
We could always use more traffic enforcement. Just switch them all over.
I mean if a state removed the TSA and spent the money on something else, surely they could use the money to create as many jobs as they removed but in an actual useful field.
But would the TSA workers vote for them?
Probably not, but the people who just got a job maybe would.
I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but I wouldn’t vote for a republican who got me a job, and I probably wouldn’t vote for anyone who got rid of my job (unless they were otherwise really great). So at least for me, getting rid of the job means you lose my vote and replacing it doesn’t necessarily gain my vote.
Could we pay them to dig a ditch and fill it back in again? It’d be just as useful.
No, it’d be more useful just on account of the harm they are not doing. I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do instead, hell, do a huge UBI experiment and just let them chill. Might as well.
If it’s just for the jobs we can put them to work doing something useful like carrying bags for old people in the airport. Literally anything would be more useful.
We could pay them to do nothing* that would be just as effective.
*not nothing but do whatever they want
They treat people like cattle because they are protecting the airplanes and the airline’s liability, not the people onboard or in line to board.
If people think it’s unsafe people won’t pay up to fly.
I recently realized that I have been boarding planes for years with multiple boxes of razor blades in my carry-on.
…Not a single checkpoint picked them up.
To be fair a explosion in a on the side of a line not gonna kill anyone, now a explosion in the airplane windows, maybe?, i get their argument, not that’s a good argument
The major airports have huge crowds. And we know from unfortunate experience that suitcase bombs can kill hundreds of people.