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

371–380 of 969 posts

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

#371

Post by q1w2 »

dmarcos wrote: post #120
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.

It’s not cynical when looking at the incentives. Once a rule is in place for “safety” reasons the political cost to remove is really high (what if something bad happens?). Politicians won’t touch it. That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically (on a date or when a hard condition is met)

That and the fact that one terrorist actually packed his sneakers with explosives and tried to detonate them on a plane.

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

#372

Post by lexapro »

irrational wrote: post #276
spoonjim wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That security isn’t necessarily to stop terrorism. It’s also to stop people from bringing in weapons and then using them in drunken brawls.

But, that wasn’t even a problem pre-2001. Do you not remember what things were like pre 9/11?

Not wearing a seat belt was also not a problem pre-1984.

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

#373

Post by gsnedders »

docdeek wrote: post #144
GDC7 wrote: post #60

And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter. Also the 10000+ souls at the departing and arrival train station also don't matter. Not to mention the 4000 souls aboard cruise ships. It ain't about safety from ill-intentioned people...it's about protecting the POTUS from having to give the order to open fire on an hijacked civilian plane. That's th…

Some years ago I wrote a conference paper [0] pointing to the clear difference in security screening for a flight from Lyon to Paris, and the same journey taken by TGV. The train would have more people on board but no screening of passengers, and only a friendly warning that you had to have a ticket to ride the train (in practice, you could buy one on the way or not buy one at all if you got lucky). The ticket could…

I'm surprised to see you didn't mention the 1983 bombing on board a TGV!

That said, there's a lot more (remote, exposed) infrastructure one could target.

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

#374

Post by h2odragon »

EMM_386 wrote: post #200
h2odragon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't feel comfortable even linking to this stuff Why not? "eww this is propaganda" or "talking about terrorist makes me one?"

> Why not? "eww this is propaganda" or "talking about terrorist makes me one?"' The actual answer is that the page, due to it's dynamic nature, at times consisted of specific details that were probably not relevant to the overall subject. It's not unreasonable in this day and age to be concerned about what you are linking to. In this case it's Wikipedia, so, "sue me".

thank you for the response, i was actually asking for information; apologies if the tone sounded sarcastic.

This detail seems relevant:

> Yousef smuggled the nitroglycerin on board by putting it inside a small container, reputedly containing contact lens cleaning solution.

if that's the basis of "no liquids on planes" rules then its horseshit. make people shake the bottle at the security checkin.

Almost all the security theater relies on things being to scary for people to think about. Nitroglycerin when liquid is not yer friend. Ricin was never the boogeyman the media made it out to be. And on and on for years now.

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

#375

Post by q1w2 »

wpietri wrote: post #321
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…

Is the primary goal of security at a college football game to stop a suicide bomber? I strongly doubt that's how they see it.

It worked in Paris a few years ago. Two suicide bombers were stopped at security and detonated their suicide vests - no other people were killed besides the terrorists.

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

#376

Post by ctrlp »

stouset wrote: post #257
aww_dang wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I initially thought he was claiming the inverse, that mask proponents were extremists. From the perspective of 2019, that wouldn't be an unreasonable assumption, but here we are. Today people are advocating using the force of the state, in other words violence against those who do not share their views on mask mandates.

Can we kindly stop using hyperbole like “using the force of the state, in other words violence” as an argument against literally any governmental policy ever? In this same fantasy universe jack-booted government thugs are beating up people who don’t wear seat belts or who mislabel the nutritional contents on a package of cheese, except that’s just not what ever actually happens in the real world. These kinds of laws…

Exhibit A: Australia Exhibit B: Canada Exhibit C: New Zealand

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

#378

Post by mekoka »

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.

I've had to take my shoes off in a few other places, including in Ethiopia and a few places in S.E. Asia. But I confirm that the US takes things to a level beyond anything anywhere I've been, with some airports being worst than others. Nowadays when I buy plane tickets, I usually try to avoid any transit through LGA or JFK.

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

#379

Post by thereddaikon »

bserge wrote: post #248
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…

The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting their own freedoms. It has worked amazingly well so far. To any motivated anti-society organization or person, this is huge leverage. A few deaths leading to a noticeably more authoritarian state? What's not to love? It doesn't even matter if the authorities do their job and punish those responsible, the people will still choose to restrict their own freedoms…

"Terrorism" in the broad sense of the act does not have a goal. Because it is a means to an end, not an end itself.

Terrorists do what they do for many reasons. Some are political, some are due to sectarianism. Sometimes its because they are crazy and have irrational motivations.

Rarely is it the goal of the terrorist to force a society into tyranny.

Timothy McVeigh was seeking revenge.

Bin Laden was trying to force the US to change its foreign policy.

ISIS was trying to conquer the middle east.

Aum Shinrikyo were a doomsday cult.

So on and so on.

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

#380

Post by jancsika »

yalogin wrote: post #30

The TSA is just a huge scam to siphon money and they need to show they are providing value. Taking shoes off is that value, so yeah it’s never going away. We could get out of Afghanistan but will never get rid of the TSA.

> Taking shoes off is that value, so yeah it’s never going away.

REMOVE_SHOES is one in probably a thousand settings in TSA's airport security makefile. Like all makefiles of any complexity, the trick is separating out the bona fide settings from the mountains of ineffectual ones that disappear somewhere deep in the nasty bowl of bureaucratic spaghetti.

As programmers, we should all inherently understand the value in not touching that goddamned mess unless someone really understands what they are doing. Even then, that almost always involves building a new system that runs in parallel to the spaghetti so that the "no touching" rule is obeyed at all times.

That's not to say TSA isn't a mess. It's just when I imagine what Libertarian International airport security looks like, the one thing I'm certain of is that they have set the RANDOMIZED_SCREENING flag incorrectly.

Post reply on HN