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Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

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Re: Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

#211

Post by henrikschroder »

Scoundreller wrote: post #194
dragonwriter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's been around long enough that people accept it as normal, it serves no other purpose than to employ the unemployable and fill contractors' coffers It serves the purpose of removing liability for security from airlines, which is the major reason why it was created. It also serves the purpose of getting people used to progressively more intrusive government inspection during routine situations. > and it seems tha…

Don’t forget about express lanes for those willing to consent and pay away their rights.

$100 for five years of Global Entry is:

1) A fucking racket.

2) Totally worth it!

Re: Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

#212

Post by jcims »

fgonzag wrote: post #196
aeternus wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By multiple orders of magnitude proabably. I'm going to go ahead and call 5000 people who have been killed by aviation terrorism events. Assuming they all live to 90 years old, that's 450,000 man years tragically lost. The FAA website stats that 630,000,000 people fly per year. If each of them takes 10 minutes to cross the line, that's 105,000,000 man-years lost per year...

You’re mixing man years and man hours. But it’s still over 11,000 man years spent in lines at the airport.

Re: Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

#213

Post by robertAngst »

issa wrote: post #95
robertAngst wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment we experience government, we see the inefficiencies, yet some people want to see government get larger. I just cannot understand the logic.

Government is great at some things. Unfortunately one of those things isn't dealing with fears rationally.

Which things?

Re: Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

#214

Post by robertAngst »

pm90 wrote: post #114
robertAngst wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment we experience government, we see the inefficiencies, yet some people want to see government get larger. I just cannot understand the logic.

It’s quite unfair to characterize the entirety of a huge organization based simply on certain functions at which it’s ineffective. Probably the most important thing it does is to keep the world from descending into a flaming fireball of constant wars between countries. There are literally thousands of other things at which it exce.

>Probably the most important thing it does is to keep the world from descending into a flaming fireball of constant wars between countries.

Gang wars are much tinier than state wars.

Re: Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

#215

Post by KozmoNau7 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #199
admax88q wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still fairly certain that the purpose of the liquid ban is purely to boost sales of toiletries, especially in small "travel size" containers. An entire new line of single use toiletry products was invented to meet this regulation.

And some airports require that your liquids fit in a 1L bag. Which they’ll gladly sell to you.

At least every airport I've been to (Europe, Dubai and India) have provided the 1L baggies for free. I usually get 4-5 uses out of them before they start tearing.

Re: Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

#216

Post by pm90 »

provolone wrote: post #168
pm90 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s quite unfair to characterize the entirety of a huge organization based simply on certain functions at which it’s ineffective. Probably the most important thing it does is to keep the world from descending into a flaming fireball of constant wars between countries. There are literally thousands of other things at which it exce.

"Probably the most important thing it does is to keep the world from descending into a flaming fireball of constant wars between countries" How many millions were killed by government in the 20th century? WW1, WWII, concentration camps, gulags, Mao's great leap forward, Vietnam, and the list goes on. War has been a constant for most of the 21st century. There is a strong argument that much of the above would not have…

> There is a strong argument that much of the above would not have been feasible without large centralized states.

Precluding that was small states engaged in constant warfare. Note that I'm not saying that centralized states are necessarily the solution, but that the US Federal Government has been successful in its objective of preventing further World Wars and that itself is a huge achievement.

Re: Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

#217

Post by dingaling »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #215
Scoundreller wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And some airports require that your liquids fit in a 1L bag. Which they’ll gladly sell to you.

At least every airport I've been to (Europe, Dubai and India) have provided the 1L baggies for free. I usually get 4-5 uses out of them before they start tearing.

'baggies' is an interesting development in the English language, a colloquialism that is longer than its base word.

Re: Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

#218

Post by dvtrn »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #41
simonsarris wrote: post #19

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…

If I had a dollar for every time I heard "listen to me, not the sign" from a TSA agent, I'd have enough money that the TSA would detain me for questioning about why I was traveling with that much money.

Or you could buy Pre-Check for everyone in the thread :P

Re: Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

#219

Post by jddj »

mseidl wrote: post #134
btbuildem wrote: post #55

It's fascinating how the security theatre has gotten so big that now it basically just rolls forward under its own momentum. It's been around long enough that people accept it as normal, it serves no other purpose than to employ the unemployable and fill contractors' coffers, and it seems that no entity is able to stop or dismantle it.

I was flying form Twin Falls to L.A. and when I went through the metal detector I set it off. So, what to the TSA people do? They don't use the metal detector wand, they take some paper and rub it on my hands and put it in a machine to detect for explosive residue/powder...

From what I've seen over the last few years, the metal detectors in many airports also serve the purpose of randomly selecting for body scans and/or explosives checks. I imagine it's an attempt to reduce discrimination and bias by humans.

It's likely that had it detected metal it would have made a different sound / colour. What you heard was probably the RNG landing on "check them for explosives".

Re: Laptops to Stay in Bags as TSA Brings New Technology to Airports

#220

Post by mattkrause »

ttsda wrote: post #207

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...

CT scans are actually fairly cheap, as far as medicinal imaging goes, unless you need to acquire a ton of slices really quickly (e.g., to image the heart). The 256 slice ones can run into the millions, but you can get a used 8 slice machine for ~five figures, and there aren’t a lot of consumables.

An MRI machine will easily run into the millions ($4M or so for a 3T, much more for the newer high field ones), and you need a steady supply of cryogens to keep the magnet cold.

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