Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ocregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 969 posts

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

#361

Post by timr »

ctrlp wrote: post #264
fma wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

It's increasingly not even that convenient. The last half-dozen times I've traveled, "PreCheck" turned into me going through the regular security line, carrying a card which they ignored.

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

#362

Post by sleavey »

anthony_romeo wrote: post #262
nickthemagicman wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

I think you intended that as a rhetorical question but I want to point out that in the UK the NHS has calculated the "worth" of a single quality-adjusted life year. If a treatment gives less quality-adjusted extra life years than it costs, it isn't administered. In 2014 it was £20-60k [1]. This shows the NHS definitely does consider older peoples' lives worth less than younger peoples', on average.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-28983924

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

#363

Post by aeoleonn »

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 Hegelian dialectic inherent in both.

A dialectic method of historical and philosophical progress that postulates (1) a beginning proposition called a thesis, (2) a negation of that thesis called the antithesis, and (3) a synthesis whereby the two conflicting ideas are reconciled to form a new proposition.

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

#364

Post by u801e »

After the number of deaths and economic impact that resulted from the pandemic, I would be perfectly fine if we completely eliminated any type of security check associated with air travel. I would rather air travel be much like traveling by train, bus, or taxi instead of what it is now.

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

#365

Post by 988747 »

bserge wrote: post #285
switch007 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Covid or with covid (edit: I’m merely asking which stat you’re citing. Source?)? Ie the disease killed them or they tested positive while dying from something else?

Methodologies vary, but comparing deaths to any of the previous years, it is clear that they've increased. And the only major change was the new virus. But of course, never let a good chance go to waste. We'll see an increase in restrictions because of Covid, they're not going away anytime soon.

The major change, at least in my country, is that healthcare is so focused on COVID that they are neglecting patients with other diseases. So the excess deaths are mostly effect of that.

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

#366

Post by bqmjjx0kac »

bedhead wrote: post #224
nickthemagicman wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're wasting your time. COVID deaths could be entirely amongst 97 year old obese smokers with stage 4 cancer and half the country would still give the same obtuse responses, call you granny-killer, tell you you're selfish for not wanting to wear a mask, say "pandemic" like it's a mic drop, etc etc etc. You'll be stuck in a COVID version of the "This amp goes to 11" conversation. It turns out that shocking people wi…

I disagree with you, even in your hypothetical situation. I'd gladly wear a mask to protect 97-year-old obese smokers, if they were a vulnerable group. I feel like you invented this group to distance the vulnerable population from "us", but it just makes it sound like you have no empathy for other humans.

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

#367

Post by dawnerd »

leecarraher wrote: post #13
88 wrote: post #5

I thought the removal of shoes was a response to the Shoe Bomber plot, not 9/11? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid

Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in airports which caught Richard Reid, was a direct response to 9/11 . Either Way, it is still mainly security theater to make passengers less apprehensive about taking what is still the safest mode of travel per passenger mile( there might be other metrics, but this is the only one I've read recently).

It’s so hard to prove either way if TSA/etc are effective. We can count how many people they stop but there’s no way of knowing how many were just scared away.

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

#368

Post by q1w2 »

u801e wrote: post #364

After the number of deaths and economic impact that resulted from the pandemic, I would be perfectly fine if we completely eliminated any type of security check associated with air travel. I would rather air travel be much like traveling by train, bus, or taxi instead of what it is now.

How would you eliminate the risk of hijackings?

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

#369

Post by AniseAbyss »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #305
jdavis703 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually isn’t the goal of terrorism. I’ve studied terrorism and the definition is essentially non-state actors using violence for political means. Now we can go in to various conspiracies from “Bush planned 9.11 as a false flag” to “Bush ignored intelligence reports so he could launch the war on terror,” but those are mostly just unproven conspiracies unrelated to what al-Qaeda wanted.

> non-state actors States can, have, and do engage in terrorism.

It has been conveniently memory holed by Western media but Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had deep ties with Al Qaeda.

How many Americans even know Bin Laden was hiding out in Pakistan for years after 11/9?

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

#370

Post by ctrlp »

cujo wrote: post #274
ctrlp wrote: post #230

The obvious purpose of removing shoes at airports has long been more about security theater than safety. The authorities must be seen to be doing something to protect travelers or the industry might not survive the customer's perception of danger. But, the less obvious reasons surely include maintaining the function of the huge TSA security apparatus put in place after 9/11. The stated function of the TSA is to prote…

> Now, we will likely add further controls on travel in the form of digital health passports with infinitely more possibility for government mischief. How do you see digital health passports as having infinitely more possibility for govt mischief? Right now TSA has the ability to treat you like a criminal if they think you looked at them funny. The health passport "mischief" seems more along the lines of "you don't h…

Well, YOU may not have a problem complying with every government mandated health intervention required of you to travel, but others might. Oddly, lots of people on HN seem not to view compulsion as a form of force when it's cloaked in paternalism, while at the same time believing the most indirect forms of social influence as oppressive forms of institutional violence if the 'right' people are impacted.

Putting that aside, it's fairly obvious given the human taboos concerning disease that if you have a mechanism for flagging a person as non-compliant with a health policy, that person is effectively tagged as diseased by implication. This is a convenient way to unperson members of a political class who are non-compliant with the policy (e.g., for personal/political/scientific/ethical/religious reasons). You needn't eliminate the enemy when their opposition to your power is embodied in their non-compliance. You merely need to make them compliant to eliminate their opposition.

Post reply on HN