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

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431–440 of 969 posts

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

#431
post #361
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does that even happen? I have pre-check, and it's always been an entirely separate line. They'd have to do a fair amount of work to redirect you over to the 'regular' line.

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

#432
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know for a fact that your background screening does not now or will not ever include calling out to a social media extremist detection service? I'm not so confident.

I’m also not confident in that. But again, if someone has put me in an “extremist detection” database I’m already in the database and the government could already query it.

Would you like to be subject to Twitter's or Facebook's interpretation of extremist?

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

#433
post #368
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?

With the current measures in place (reinforced cockpit doors), it's not a significant enough risk to worry about.

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

#434
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking of other people and getting a vaccine and going on with your life without much of any impact seems like a very low bar.

[flagged]

>Thinking that you need everyone to get a vaccine to live a normal life is a strange bar.

I don't understand what that means.

What happened to thinking of other people?

When I think of getting a vaccine... I just do it as a part of normal life. It doesn't change my life at all, outside of added immunity.

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

#435
post #426
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? The "Homeland Security" apparatus is hungry and must grow. It's about jobs, power, and money for these bureaucrats. The "Homeland Security" apparatus is the most powerful political force in America, and is more dominant than either political party. Another term for this is the police-military-industrial complex.

Police-military-industrial complex is bad. But the liberal_arts-journalism-clickbait complex overstates it.

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

#436
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again your message proves that you think about the people outside the vehicle as A-class citizens and those aboard as B-class citizens. There are 300+ people on a train and 4000+ on a cruise ship, those things don't need to be used as a weapon to cause a very sad day for the whole Nation in terms of human lives lost. Even if the thing is not used as a weapon.

It is extraordinarily difficult to kill or maim people on land using a ship as a weapon - it will simply run aground, and there are guides aboard on ships big enough to cause damage when they are near the shore, as an additional defensive measure against incompetence and hijackings (insert obligatory Ever Given meme here). For trains, the situation is similar. Even if you manage to bomb a train, it's unlikely to caus…

I would rather compare the train/cruise ship to a packed theater/stadium, rather than a commandeered aircraft used as a kinetic weapon. You have potentially thousands of vulnerable people in an enclosed space with no realistic means of escape. The idea that a bombed train isn't going to be a major disaster is baffling to me. Train derailments invariably cause massive casualties to those on board. Heck, lock the doors and start a fire.

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

#437
post #111

I'll take it a step further. We need a total paradigm redesign of airports. Imagine and airport designed to the point where you can literally drive up (or be dropped by an autonomous vehicle) 10 minutes before your flight, Throw your luggage onto a belt where a robot auto tags it based on your a facial recognition algorithm, and walk through an unobtrusive security point that's totally AI driven, and walk direct to y…

This would really only apply for fights where I'm checking in luggage...international flights, for example. I wouldn't mind a feature where I can drop off my luggage somewhere near my house the day before my flight and it gets tagged, bulked transferred and inspected at the airport. This would allow me to straight to the gate and not need to check in large luggage or fumble with luggage while rushing for a flight. Th…

I'm half-surprised we don't already have this. The airlines already use some sort of uber-like self-employed contractors to deliver lost luggage. They could offer the same service in the other direction.

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

#438
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of any life-threatening allergic reaction to any drug or bomb sniffing dog. Has that actually happened? If so...how, when, and where?

Asthma attacks are not uncommon in response to dog dander. Those can be life-threatening, but can be managed with albuterol. 30 seconds with Google will turn up countless documented instances. Anaphylaxis is a very rare response to animal dander, but there have been a few documented instances: https://www.petful.com/misc/can-pet-allergies-kill-me/ What's amazing is the number of dog owners who don't believe in dog al…

Countless documented instances of asthma induced by the dander of drug/bomb sniffing dogs or just dogs in general? I have asthma and have occasionally reacted to animal dander—but never in an airport or other location due to service animals.

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

#439
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does that even happen? I have pre-check, and it's always been an entirely separate line. They'd have to do a fair amount of work to redirect you over to the 'regular' line.

It used to happen only at smaller airports that didn't have the capacity to handle extra lines. But lately, I've had it happen at bit airports (like ATL), so I'm not really sure.

The answer to your (implicit?) question is that it doesn't work. The staff take the card from you at the start of the process, and once your bag is in the machine, they have no idea if it's yours. So far, every time this has happened, I"ve been singled out for additional security.

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

#440
I saw a documentary on border controls in afghanistan where they used a pretty ingenious idea. they frisk a guy and check his pulse at the same time. so a guy holds two fingers to the guys jugular vein, and the other one checks him. any increase in pulse and its an indicator they should keep searching.
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