This is a pretty cynical viewpoint but I agree. It’s clear that TSA doesn’t do much. Someone I know has acidentially brought a pocketknife through security multiple times without it being found. They keep it in my backpack as a regular item and just forgot to take it out.
I had an emergency pocket knife at the bottom of my bag -- I totally forgot about it, I went through 2 US airports and 2 European airports before it was found in London. Our screening is worthless
London is crazy though. If the most minuscule thing is wrong about your luggage they'll pass it through every security check.
The moment I pull out my ipad and macbook and entrust the fate of around 3000 dollars worth of electronics to the competence and benevolence of government officials who barely give a shit is my least favorite part of the travel experience
I don’t know why, but for me it’s the shoes. My laptop bag makes it fairly easy to take my laptop out and put it back in, but dealing with taking my shoes on and off really fucking bugs me. It’s totally irrational, I know.
Shoes is an American thing btw. If you travel within the EU, you never have to take your shoes off.
My father has stopped flying entirely. He's got a pacemaker and sometimes needs a cane and has a small list of medications that he legitimately needs to have with him at all times. He's diabetic, as well. Though he's not very overweight, he just doesn't move as well as he once did. TSA has made flying for him and people like him so incredibly difficult. He's just opted out. I don't blame him, either, though it does m…
I'd really like to see an analysis of the total number of passenger-minutes that are spent waiting in TSA lines. Divide that by the avg human lifespan and compare it to the number of people killed or injured by a terrorist attack. When looked at like that, TSA costs more total lifetimes than have ever been taken through terrorist attacks.
That 630m figure is for US domestic flights.
Otherwise, thanks for doing the math on how much of our lives is killed by security screening.
About a year ago I was at an airport (Boston? New Jersey?) outbound that had a sign or TV monitor saying "Great news, you no longer need to take your laptop out of your bag!" I read this sign as a TSA worker shouted every 30 seconds to the shuffling line about how everyone needed to take out all laptops, "ipads", cameras, etc. I wonder if it was a pilot program. Or more likely, just part of the constantly shifting fa…
It seems every airport has its own different security theatre just to keep us on our toes. In Newark, I put my backpack in the plastic bin. Vegas, put the bag directly on the conveyor belt. LaGuardia, stack the bins after picking up your items. Vegas, do not stack the bins.
My favourite is when different countries create different carryon regulations.
Pro tip: if you’re crafting aircraft security regulations for a living, get on one of those aircraft to get together to create a harmonized set of regulations.
I don’t know why, but for me it’s the shoes. My laptop bag makes it fairly easy to take my laptop out and put it back in, but dealing with taking my shoes on and off really fucking bugs me. It’s totally irrational, I know.
I think your feeling is pretty rational. It's pretty annoying for no benefit. I wish they also offered flights with lower security. I'm fine getting on a plane if everyone went through a metal detector and kept their shoes on.
Could you imagine how much they’d add to the safety video for shoes-on flights?
Probably a 9 minute video that hijacks your IFE about which button to press if you see a shoe bomber.
They're planning on using "AI" (Machine learning/Computer Vision) to slowly automate identification. They already do this now, but are limited by the quality of images. > For example, TSA is working to develop new algorithms that use machine learning approaches to discriminate between threats and benign objects, making the screening process more effective and efficient. Machine learning also offers a way to screen fo…
>With CT technology, we could see even more nuanced differences get flagged for unusual. Good, that's more data to learn from and that would only be a minor issue for a short period of time for new devices. How often have you flown with something that other passengers hadn't likely have flown numerous times with before you? Even if the system picks out 0.1% of items for manual classification and training, that's stil…
They’ll just add it to your history of items to your permanent record.
Just don’t get consistent with luggage and suddenly go unique!
The real fun starts when they create a social graph of people carrying similar things.
For your safety of course.
It probably could feed into an interesting friend-making system if they assigned seats based on the info.
It's revolting how much money will be spent by the American government on mandatory luggage CT scans, especially considering the cost such scans have in the medical context where lives are truly at stake...
Global entry/TSA pre-check is the best $100 you can spend (or not since the application fee is covered by a lot of premium credit cards) Keep shoes, keep laptop in bag, keep jacket on, way shorter line...I’m simulateously happy that not everyone is doing it and dumbfounded why anyone who travels more than a few times a year wouldn’t have it by now.
I don't buy precheck out of principal. You shouldn't have to pay extra for a less invasive security experience
Exactly. As if they aren’t capable of stratifying your risk the second you buy the ticket.
"While the CT pilot program didn’t show reduced wait times at participating airports, the agency is expecting the technology will speed up lines as passengers and staffers get used to the new processes. " So, they just agreed to $97 million worth of new technology with no proven benefit. Great.
New technology with no proven benefit in the airport security context, which is going to be applied to every passenger's luggage for no extra charge, and will retain it's tremendous cost in the truly life-saving medical environment.
>With CT technology, we could see even more nuanced differences get flagged for unusual. Good, that's more data to learn from and that would only be a minor issue for a short period of time for new devices. How often have you flown with something that other passengers hadn't likely have flown numerous times with before you? Even if the system picks out 0.1% of items for manual classification and training, that's stil…
They’ll just add it to your history of items to your permanent record. Just don’t get consistent with luggage and suddenly go unique! The real fun starts when they create a social graph of people carrying similar things. For your safety of course. It probably could feed into an interesting friend-making system if they assigned seats based on the info.
They could do that now with the current x ray images if they wanted to. Also by classification I'm just referring to classifying in broad categories such as benign, weapon, drugs, bomb, etc. Right now when you go through security the images aren't tied directly to the owner, just a location and a time. Unless the scanner gets tied to e.g. scanning your boarding pass when putting a bin through that doesn't give you a way to tie that information to an individual. Additional cameras with some AI to track people from the boarding pass scan through the checkpoint would allow for what you're talking about but all of that is orthogonal to what specific type of scanner is being used.