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20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

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Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#261

Post by mlindner »

wycy wrote: post #89
the_snooze wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. It's not a 9/11-style attack we need to be worried about. No one will let a plane get commandeered ever again. The 9/11 terrorists took advantage of the "comply with the hijackers" policy in place at the time. That opportunity ended the moment the second plane hit the towers. The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact attack tha…

> The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact attack that paralyzed an entire metro region for nearly a month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more common.

> Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more common.

The media overreports on how radical these people are. There's very few. However if COVID restrictions keep pushing forward I think that may change. Many people are at their breaking point right now.

I'm fully vaccinated and I've already decided I'm never going to wear a mask again and avoid stores that actually enforce mask rules (most don't, even if they put labels on doors mandated by the state).

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#262

Post by anthony_romeo »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #142
ridaj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except many, many more deaths in the case of Covid, and we don't have, thankfully, a federal Covid Corps to enforce any of the related policies...

Many deaths in a certain age group above 65 y.o.. Most age groups had very few deaths.

In your opinion, how important are the lives of people aged 65 and older?

Also, for death rates being higher in the elderly... isn't that going to be true for most diseases? Pointing this out seems tautological to me.

And what does "very few" actually mean here?

Is death the only negative outcome of COVID-19?

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#263

Post by nradov »

titzer wrote: post #157
bedhead wrote: post #40

Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.

> The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie. I don't see the same parallels. After 9/11 the US was extraordinarily united and committed to vengeance. Thousands joined the military. After COVID we're more divided than ever and people are not even willing put a piece of cloth on their faces. Widespread denial and resistance to anything inconveniencing them. Whereas after 9/11 people were willing…

Putting on cloth masks doesn't produce a statistically significant decrease in symptomatic infection rates.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#264

Post by ctrlp »

fma wrote: post #95
stoolpigeon wrote: post #18

The US is the only place I think I've had to remove shoes for flight security in years. But in Europe taking off a belt is often required while in the US it is not. In Budapest they stopped having us remove laptops from bags a bit ago. My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to do in each place as the security people at the airports had a tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way.

Sometimes I get the magic "Pre-check" and I'd forget I don't need to take the laptop off, for example. I just try to look ahead and see what others are doing.

Pre-check screening is the EZPass of the security state. Exchange your privacy for convenience. Submit to a background probe and permanent residence in a government database (and god knows what other consents are required) and you, too, can join the upper tier of society. Leave the filthy plebes and their shoeless drudgery and pat-downs behind you as you ascend into the clear air of the Verified(TM) elite. You pose no threat, quite the opposite! You support and serve the power structure. Welcome aboard!

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#265

Post by gambiting »

trident5000 wrote: post #70
baktubi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the nation should make military training/civil service mandatory. The reality is that random attacks will happen in random places and everyone needs to be equipped to handle accordingly. Basic combat training and paramedic abilities, disaster recovery and such associated procedures. This would create a tighter bond between citizens and improve communities ability to look after one-another. If everyone handles…

Im in favor of people concealed carrying for this exact reason...distributed security works better than slow centralized security and a vulnerable public. Obviously this doesnt work for a plane though. Fully expect to get downvoted for this on HN...because its HN.

>>distributed security works better than slow centralized security and a vulnerable public

Except that it literally doesn't. We know from public verifiable stats that people who own a gun end up hurting themselves or their family several orders of magnitutde more often than defending against an attacker or actually using it for self defense. It happens, but the numbers clearly point that it's massively ineffective for that purpose.

>>Fully expect to get downvoted for this on HN...because its HN.

You mean because people on HN frequently believe in the power of statistical analysis and logical thinking when it comes to deciding when something is worth doing or not?

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#266

Post by barbazoo »

BoHerfIIIJrEsq wrote: post #23
antihero wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any attempt at this, the terrorists will have a game plan of how to convince people on the flight to chill out, that they have no mal-intent towards the passengers, etc etc. I mean it might not work, but I reckon they'd put on a really good act and manipulate people heavily into making it feel like they are actually quite safe and it would be a poor decision to try and overrun them.

> how to convince people on the flight to chill out My sense is that there is nothing they could say. Hijack a plane, a bunch of men are going to attack you. That's it.

People freaking out and being aggressive on planes about much less these days...

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#267

Post by LanceH »

duxup wrote: post #222

So much security that not sense. I attend college football games. Everyone goes through security. Outside security we pack up in masses of humanity outside the gates waiting to get through the inevitably slow security. It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude to the density of humanity there where there is no security ... than in the stadium where people are actually more spread out. If someon…

> What are we doing this for?

At college football games this is all done to drive up the price of concessions.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#268

Post by newswasboring »

CountDrewku wrote: post #247
newswasboring wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a mountain worth of difference. The policies enacted for COVID have a very specific target, has been shown to work repeatedly, and deviating from them caused decline in the KPI its trying to maintain. Its nothing like TSA.

Ok then what's the target? Eradication of the virus is not achievable and neither is full vaccination of the entire population. I have yet to hear any hard numbers for removal of "safety" measures from any politician when enacting lockdowns/mandates. I think you're fooling yourself if you believe there's some hard target.

The target is to save lives. If the threat is still there, we need to keep the safety measures. And covid measures have always been dynamic. Safety measures have been removed or reintroduced based up on very hard statistics man. I don't know how you don't see that.

edit: My first sentence was a bit garbage. The target is to save lives from covid and avoid its spread. Hospital utilization and mortality rate from the disease are good KPIs for that. Almost all responsible countries are at least trying to follow those KPIs.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#269

Post by xscott »

duxup wrote: post #222

So much security that not sense. I attend college football games. Everyone goes through security. Outside security we pack up in masses of humanity outside the gates waiting to get through the inevitably slow security. It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude to the density of humanity there where there is no security ... than in the stadium where people are actually more spread out. If someon…

I suspect it's not about protecting the people (your college stadium example), and that it is about protecting the expensive airplanes.

If I'm being charitable, it might also be about protecting the buildings that planes can crash into.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#270

Post by luxuryballs »

duxup wrote: post #222

So much security that not sense. I attend college football games. Everyone goes through security. Outside security we pack up in masses of humanity outside the gates waiting to get through the inevitably slow security. It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude to the density of humanity there where there is no security ... than in the stadium where people are actually more spread out. If someon…

This is why I believe the TSA wasn’t made to protect citizens it was only made to prevent airplanes from being used as projectiles against the government/military.
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