Pilot to TSA: 'No Groping Me and No Naked Photos'

Re: Backscatter civilian unrest

If Im in uniform and say "If you touch my junk, I might get a boner..." could I get into trouble?
 
dasleben said:
You know who started the TSA, don't you? :crazy: Same people who pushed through the USA Patriot Act, among other legislation. Today's conservatives in office haven't been conservative for a very long time. In fact, quite the opposite is usually true. We're seeing that now with the TSA.

EDIT: Not trying to start a political fight, but my points fit the thread.
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I do agree that it was GWB that started the TSA... and it has always been my contention that it was his biggest mistake. He caved to a panicky nation to "do something", and instead of winding his watch, he feathered the wrong prop.
 
tsquare said:
I do agree that it was GWB that started the TSA... and it has always been my contention that it was his biggest mistake. He caved to a panicky nation to "do something", and instead of winding his watch, he feathered the wrong prop.
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Agree. People were demanding safety and security, and he unfortunately caved to perceived pressure to do something, anything; and do it NOW. Now, a bureaucracy has been created which has grown a life of its own......the TSA, and its parent the DHS. Other agencies under the DHS....of which there was no problem where they were before such as the USSS, USCG and US Customs.......were all rolled into this agency and still don't operate very efficiently.
 
nosehair said:
OK, the fact that you can bring down the airplane with your hands isn't the point.

The point, at some point, every body has to get searched. Your uniforms, and badges, and special papers, and background screenings, are too easy to forge, duplicate, simulate, corrupt, etc., so that no system I can think of can substitute for, and detect like a physical search.

The TSA person does not know, and cannot trust, that you really are the pilot.

All the sexual inuendo and protest of having your body parts looked at, for the mutual purpose of security, seems a little "me thinks thy doth protest too much".

I remember when I first went into the military service, I did not like having to run around naked taking showers and etc, but it was my job. I chose to be there.
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You contradict yourself in your attempt to rationalize your point, and demonstrate exceptional ignorance. You acknowledge that we are flying the plane, which is the ultimate weapon that we could have in our hands. And you assert that no system can detect like a physical search. See the problem here? Unless you confiscate their brains you have not taken anything from a pilot needed to turn an aircraft into a weapon. Those "special papers" and background checks ensure this does not happen.
 
A Life Aloft said:
Yeffet’s recommendation is simple: Start small, and try implementing El Al’s brand of security at at least one major US airport, and see if it is successful.
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Really? So... OK... if no airplanes blow up.. it is successful. If an airplane blows up.... Really? That is his suggestion? I mean don't get me wrong, for El Al, this system works well, but they have.. what maybe 150 flights/day? Try this interview process over 200,000 passengers, and they will have to cut off checkin the week before your flight leaves. The scale is just too different....
 
z987k said:
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...takes-aim-at-screening-1576602-108259869.html

Amid airport anger, GOP takes aim at screening

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
November 15, 2010

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...creening-1576602-108259869.html#ixzz15Ud1OdoX

Did you know that the nation's airports are not required to have Transportation Security Administration screeners checking passengers at security checkpoints? The 2001 law creating the TSA gave airports the right to opt out of the TSA program in favor of private screeners after a two-year period. Now, with the TSA engulfed in controversy and hated by millions of weary and sometimes humiliated travelers, Rep. John Mica, the Republican who will soon be chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, is reminding airports that they have a choice.
Mica, one of the authors of the original TSA bill, has recently written to the heads of more than 150 airports nationwide suggesting they opt out of TSA screening. "When the TSA was established, it was never envisioned that it would become a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy which was soon to grow to 67,000 employees," Mica writes. "As TSA has grown larger, more impersonal, and administratively top-heavy, I believe it is important that airports across the country consider utilizing the opt-out provision provided by law."
In addition to being large, impersonal, and top-heavy, what really worries critics is that the TSA has become dangerously ineffective. Its specialty is what those critics call "security theater" -- that is, a show of what appear to be stringent security measures designed to make passengers feel more secure without providing real security. "That's exactly what it is," says Mica. "It's a big Kabuki dance."
Now, the dance has gotten completely out of hand. And like lots of fliers -- I spoke to him as he waited for a flight at the Orlando airport -- Mica sees TSA's new "naked scanner" machines and groping, grossly invasive passenger pat-downs as just part of a larger problem. TSA, he says, is relying more on passenger humiliation than on practices that are proven staples of airport security.
For example, many security experts have urged TSA to adopt techniques, used with great success by the Israeli airline El Al, in which passengers are observed, profiled, and most importantly, questioned before boarding planes. So TSA created a program known as SPOT -- Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques. It began hiring what it called behavior detection officers, who would be trained to notice passengers who acted suspiciously. TSA now employs about 3,000 behavior detection officers, stationed at about 160 airports across the country.
The problem is, they're doing it all wrong. A recent Government Accountability Office study found that TSA "deployed SPOT nationwide without first validating the scientific basis for identifying suspicious passengers in an airport environment." They haven't settled on the standards needed to stop bad actors.
"It's not an Israeli model, it's a TSA, screwed-up model," says Mica. "It should actually be the person who's looking at the ticket and talking to the individual. Instead, they've hired people to stand around and observe, which is a bastardization of what should be done."
In a May 2010 letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Mica noted that the GAO "discovered that since the program's inception, at least 17 known terrorists ... have flown on 24 different occasions, passing through security at eight SPOT airports." One of those known terrorists was Faisal Shahzad, who made it past SPOT monitors onto a Dubai-bound plane at New York's JFK International Airport not long after trying to set off a car bomb in Times Square. Federal agents nabbed him just before departure.
Mica and other critics in Congress want to see quick and meaningful changes in the way TSA works. They go back to the days just after Sept. 11, when there was a hot debate about whether the new passenger-screening force would be federal employees, as most Democrats wanted, or private contractors, as most Republicans wanted. Democrats won and TSA has been growing ever since.
But the law did allow a test program in which five airports were allowed to use private contractors. A number of studies done since then have shown that contractors perform a bit better than federal screeners, and they're also more flexible and open to innovation. (The federal government pays the cost of screening whether performed by the TSA or by contractors, and contractors work under federal supervision.)
TSA critics know a federal-to-private change won't solve all of the problems with airport security. But it might create the conditions under which some of those problems could indeed be fixed. With passenger anger overflowing and new leadership in the House, something might finally get done.


Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...creening-1576602-108259869.html#ixzz15Uctz1Yn​
 
I really hope that over Thanksgiving thousands of travelers create such a huge stink about this that half the people going to grandmas house miss their flights. Then demand refunds. When it happens long enough and the airlines can't make a profit because people won't go through security they will finally do something about it.
 
BeRich said:
WHY ARE THEY NOT DOING THIS?!
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Probably a liability thing, if "terrorists" get past private security at the airport the airport authorities are liable where as this way they can just say "nope sue the government they were in charge of it".
 
Oh also I walked into the Canadian Parliament building (their version of the Capital building), no fences, no metal detectors even, walked into the Ottawa Mint and did the tour, no metal detectors, no armed guards, nothing. In fact the entire time up there I can't remember even seeing a cop except the 5 that ate at the Chinese restaurant I was at my last night up there.

Meanwhile to go into the original post office building in DC you have to walk thru metal detectors...

Edit: wait there was an armed guard in the mint, standing next to the $500,000 gold bar connected to a chain that you can hold for a photo op.
 
tsquare said:
Really? So... OK... if no airplanes blow up.. it is successful. If an airplane blows up.... Really? That is his suggestion? I mean don't get me wrong, for El Al, this system works well, but they have.. what maybe 150 flights/day? Try this interview process over 200,000 passengers, and they will have to cut off checkin the week before your flight leaves. The scale is just too different....
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Yes I believe that it could beimplemented and I believe it would be a hundred times less invasive and provide better, true security than the b.s. that we currently have. I am not alone in that thinking.

Forbes Nov.14, 2010

Full Frontal Nudity Doesn’t Make Us Safer: Abolish The TSA

The Republicans control the House of Representatives and are bracing for a long battle over the President’s health care proposal. In the spirit of bipartisanship and sanity, I propose that the first thing on the chopping block should be an ineffective organization that wastes money, violates our rights, and encourages us to make decisions that imperil our safety. I’m talking about the Transportation Security Administration.

Bipartisan support should be immediate. For fiscal conservatives, it’s hard to come up with a more wasteful agency than the TSA. For privacy advocates, eliminating an organization that requires you to choose between a nude body scan or genital groping in order to board a plane should be a no-brainer.

But won’t that compromise safety? I doubt it. The airlines have enormous sums of money riding on passenger safety, and the notion that a government bureaucracy has better incentives to provide safe travels than airlines with billions of dollars worth of capital and goodwill on the line strains credibility. This might be beside the point: in 2003, William Anderson incisively argued that some of the steps that airlines (and passengers) would have needed to take to prevent the 9/11 disaster probably would have been illegal.

The odds of dying from a terrorist attack are much lower than the odds of dying from doing any of a number of incredibly mundane things we do every day. You are almost certainly more likely to die or be injured driving to the airport than you are to be injured by a terrorist once you’re in the air, even without a TSA. Indeed, once you have successfully made it to the airport, the most dangerous part of your trip is over. Until it’s time to drive home, that is.

Last week, I picked up a “TSA Customer Comment Card.” First, it’s important that we get one thing straight: I am not the TSA’s “customer.” The term “customer” denotes an honorable relationship in which I and a seller voluntarily trade value for value. There’s nothing voluntary about my relationship with the TSA.

A much more appropriate term for our relationship is “subject.” The TSA stands between me and those with whom I would like to trade, and I am not allowed to without their blessing.

Second, the TSA doesn’t provide security. It provides security theater, as Jeffrey Goldberg argues. The kid with the slushie in Tucson before the three-ounce-rule? The little girl in the princess costume at an airport I don’t remember? The countless grandmothers? I’m more likely to be killed tripping over my own two feet while I’m distracted by the lunacy of it all than I am to be killed by one of them in a terrorist attack. The moral cost of all this is considerable, as James Otteson and Bradley Birzer argue.

For even more theater of the absurd, consider that the TSA screens pilots. If a pilot wants to bring a plane down, he or she can probably do it with bare hands, and certainly without weapons. It’s also not entirely crazy to think that an airline will take measures to keep their pilots from turning their multi-million dollar planes into flying bombs. Through the index funds in my retirement portfolio, I’m pretty sure I own stock in at least one airline, and I’m pretty sure airline managers know that cutting corners on security isn’t in my best interests as a shareholder.

And the items being confiscated? Are nailclippers and aftershave the tools of terrorists? What about the plastic cup of water I was told to dispose of because “it could be acid” (I quote the TSA screener) in New Orleans before the three-ounce rule? What about the can of Coke I was relieved of after a flight from Copenhagen to Atlanta a few months ago? I would be more scared of someone giving a can of Coke to a child and contributing to the onset of juvenile diabetes than of using it to hide something that could compromise the safety of an aircraft.

And finally, most screening devices are ineffective because anyone who is serious about getting contraband on an airplane can smuggle it in a body cavity or a surgical implant. The scanners the TSA uses aren’t going to stop them.
Over the next few years, we’re headed for a bitter, partisan clash over legislative priorities. Before the battle starts, let’s reach for that low-hanging, bipartisan fruit. Let’s abolish the TSA.

and:

'Naked' scanners at US airports may be dangerous: scientists (Update)
"They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays," Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, told AFP.
"No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner," he said.

The possible health dangers posed by the scanners add to passengers' and airline crews' concerns about the devices, which have been dubbed "naked" scanners because of the graphic image they give of a person's body, genitalia and all.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began rolling out full-body scanners at US airports in 2007, but stepped up deployment of the devices this year when stimulus funding made it possible to buy another 450 of the advanced imaging technology scanners.

Some 315 "naked" scanners are currently in use at 65 US airports, according to the TSA.
Passengers and airline crew members, including pilots, are randomly selected to pass through the scanners. They have the option of refusing, but will then be subjected to what the TSA calls an "enhanced" manual search by an agent.
"People are not reacting well to these pat-downs," said a travel industry official, who asked not to be named.
Government officials have said that the scanners have been tested and meet safety standards.
But Captain David Bates, president of the Allied Pilots Association, which represents pilots at American Airlines, urged members to avoid the full-body scanner.

"No pilot at American Airlines should subject themselves to the needless privacy invasion and potential health risks caused by the body scanner," he said in a letter this month, which was obtained by AFP.
"Politely decline exposure and request alternative screening," even if "the enhanced pat-down is a demeaning experience," he said.

A group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) raised concerns about the "potential serious health risks" from the scanners in a letter sent to the White House of Science and Technology in April.
Biochemist John Sedat and his colleagues said in the letter that most of the energy from the scanners is delivered to the skin and underlying tissue.

"While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high," they wrote.

The scientists say the X-rays could pose a risk to everyone from travelers over the age of 65 to pregnant women and their unborn babies, to HIV-positive travelers, cancer patients and men.
"Men's sexual organs are exposed to the X-rays. The skin is very thin there," Love explained.
The of Science and Technology responded this week to the scientists' letter, saying the scanners have been "tested extensively" by US government agencies and were found to meet safety standards.
But Sedat told AFP Friday: "We still don't know the beam intensity or other details of their classified system."
 
EL AL's Security Vs. the U.S. Approach

Israel's national carrier hasn't suffered a hijacking since 1968. Can America match that record without embracing the same tactics? Bloomberg 2003

For weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks, there was no shortage of advice on how ravaged U.S. airlines could remake themselves in the image of El Al, Israel's national airline and the gold standard for aviation security. Thanks to stringent security checks, frequent passenger grillings, and unabashed profiling, El Al has not had a terrorist hijacking since 1968.

Today, daily headlines warn of new threats to American passenger planes. On Aug. 11, the Homeland Security Dept. cautioned U.S. carriers that al Qaeda may attempt suicide hijackings over the next few months. And on Aug. 13, the FBI announced it had apprehended a man trying to sell a shoulder-fired missile to an agency informant, who said he wanted to down a commercial jetliner. The threat is rising, not receding. Two years after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, are U.S. carriers as prepared as El Al to deal with the terrorist threat?

U.S. airports are certainly more secure. But security experts warn they're not yet secure enough to prevent another attack. The reason: The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has focused on reactive countermeasures, rather than strategic deterrence and risk management.

SECRET PROCEDURES. The TSA insists American aviation security is now unparalleled. "The extraordinary amount of money that has been spent on screeners, technology, and other procedures has been done in a way that addresses the American aviation industry," says TSA spokesman Mark Hatfield. "At any given airport, checkpoint, or baggage-screening station, we welcome any comparisons."

Fair enough -- it's hard to make an official comparison, since El Al doesn't disclose its security procedures. But former insiders and security experts outlined four pillars of El Al's approach and how TSA procedures match up. The conclusion: There are still key differences:

Staff Hiring and Training. Since its inception, the TSA has hired 55,000 security screeners for America's 424 airports. (Today, the total number is down to 49,000 because of TSA budget cuts.) The rush strained what should have been strict hiring procedures. According to the TSA, about 22,000 employees continue to work without background checks. On June 3, TSA chief, Admiral James Loy, told a House subcommittee that as of May 31, the TSA had terminated 1,208 screeners, who were found unsuitable for service after thorough investigation. At New York's JFK International airport alone, 50 security screeners were found to have criminal records. El Al faces no such personnel headaches.

Once hired, U.S. and El Al security receive extensive training. The TSA mandates 104 hours of training -- 44 in the classroom and 60 on the job -- learning to work the various machines, including electronic-detection equipment, X-ray machines, and hand-wands. At El Al, screeners are trained not only in the use of technology but to ask questions that might unmask a terrorist.

Isaac Yeffet, who served as director of global security at El Al from 1978 to 1984 and is now president of New York-based Yeffet Security Consultants, likes to tell the story of a terrorist plot uncovered in the early 1980s. Islamic terrorists befriended a German man recently released from jail and asked him if he would like to make some money smuggling drugs to Israel. The group flew to Zurich, where they bought him a ticket to Tel Aviv. Upon arrival at the airport, El Al screeners scanned his luggage and found nothing unusual. However, when they asked the man why he bought his ticket in Switzerland rather than his home city in Germany, he didn't have an answer. A hand search followed. Guards didn't find drugs, but they discover nearly 10 pounds of explosives. Knowing enough to ask that key question stopped a terrorist action.

On the job, U.S. and El Al security personnel are constantly tested to ensure that no weapon or terrorist slips through. In both countries, undercover teams try to devise ways to slip through the security net. The TSA has even designed software that randomly projects images of bombs, knives, and guns onto the electric readouts of devices such as X-ray machines to make sure that screeners stay alert. "Testing our own system is the best way strengthen the system and cover any possible weaknesses," says Hatfield.

In Israel, almost nothing slips through, Yeffet claims. And if it does, screeners are fired on the spot. The TSA wouldn't comment on its hiring-and-firing policies. But Yeffet says TSA figures revealed that in 2002, U.S. screeners failed to identify 70% of knives and 60% of false explosives put on the X-Ray belt by testers. "Routine is the enemy of good security," says Yeffet. "The day you think nothing will happen, something will."

Locked Cockpit Doors. On El Al flights, bulletproof cockpit doors remain locked from before boarding until the last passenger has disembarked. It's a simple requirement that ensures no terrorist can gain access to the controls.

The TSA says U.S. airlines were required to keep cockpit doors locked throughout flights long before September 11. And since 9/11, all planes have added reinforced cockpit doors. The final layer of security is the new Federal Flight Deck Officers program, where pilots are trained and licensed to use firearms within their jurisdiction -- the cockpit. So far, the TSA has trained 44 pilots.

The guns-in-cockpits program flummoxes security experts, however. "If you reinforce the cockpit door and keep it closed, why do you need weapons on board? They could get misplaced or misused," says Andrew Thomas, author of Aviation Insecurity: The New Challenges of Air Travel (Prometheus Books, 2003). "We don't ask what new security problems could be created by implementing a new measure. That's what El Al is constantly asking itself."

Positive Passenger Bag Matching. El Al requires that no checked bag be transported on a plane if its owner doesn't board the originating or connecting flight. The practice also became a standard in Europe and Asia in the 1980s after suitcase bombs brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Air India's Flight 182 en route to London, and UTA's Flight 772 to Paris. In all three cases, the terrorists who planted those bombs weren't on board.

The TSA has embraced electronic-detection systems that screen bags for bombs and other explosives in lieu of bag-matching. As of Jan. 1, the TSA is required to match bags only if a scanning device isn't available. That worries Arnold Barnett, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management and a former chair of the Federal Aviation Administration's technical team.

Barnett argues that bag-matching deters bombers far more than electronic-detection systems by ensuring that terrorists will proceed to the gate to board. If detection devices reveal a bomb, while they're waiting, they can be quickly located and arrested. Without bag-matching, more than likely they will already have left the airport -- free to try again another day.

Cargo Security. After September 11, all U.S. mail over 1 pound was banned from passenger planes. The rule meant an annual revenue loss of $1 billion to $2 billion to struggling U.S. carriers. To help improve the airlines' fortunes, TSA is now permitting heavier packages to be carried on passenger planes after it has been sniffed by trained K-9 teams.

Sniffer dogs are considered effective detectors, but MIT's Barnett worries about the opportunities it affords terrorists: All a terrorist has to do is go to a post office and turn in a package of explosives with a fake destination and return address, he figures. No I.D. required. If a dog detects it at the airport, the terrorist simply shows up the next day at another post office with a new package. Says Barnett: "It turns flying into Russian roulette."

In contrast, El Al uses sophisticated detection machines to search for liquid explosives. It also places all cargo in decompression chambers before flight to uncover explosives that might be detonated by altitude-sensitive triggers.

TSA backers argue that comparing El Al and U.S. security procedures is specious and unreasonable. El Al runs about 40 flights a day, vs. 35,000 U.S. domestic and international flights. And even TSA critics admit that if U.S. aviation security was as good as El Al, it would only drive wily terrorists to find other ways. In Israel, impenetrable airline security has resulted in suicide bombers who blow themselves up on buses and in pizza parlors.

Still, as Congress contemplates spending $7 billion to $10 billion on equipping pasenger planes with antimissile protections -- a reaction to the news of the FBI's successful sting -- security experts wonder if yet another reactive measure will make U.S. passengers safer. "The TSA needs to think more strategically," says Thomas. That's the El Al way. It should also be the American one.


 
A Life Aloft said:
The of Science and Technology responded this week to the scientists' letter, saying the scanners have been "tested extensively" by US government agencies and were found to meet safety standards.
But Sedat told AFP Friday: "We still don't know the beam intensity or other details of their classified system."
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Yeah, because we all know that our government has neeveer lied to us before. If they are going to subject us to stuff like this, then it needs to not be classifed. Maybe there is a reason why they won't allow the TSA agents to wear a radiation badge. It sure would be nice to have one of them sneak one in under their clothes.
 
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