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

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

#601

Post by svachalek » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

chucksta wrote: post #590

hermannj314 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an impatience mismatch between the average traveler and airport security. Flying out of Philly Airport, the TSA yelled at everyone to take off their belt and shoes, shaking their head in disbelief at people that didn't know the rules, wasting everyone's time. A few months later, same airport, new rules, now the TSA yelled at people taking off their belts and shoes because that's not a rule, shaking their hea…

The Philly airport employees are some of the least hospitable I've encountered traveling, especially their TSA. They come off as actively hostile about everything

Interesting, I have not spent a whole lot of time in Philadelphia but that describes my experience everywhere there, seemed like everyone is always angry and impatient with me before I even start to interact. (Kind of like the NYC stereotype, which I encounter only rarely when I visit NYC.) But TSA in general is tough to deal with, I fly once sometimes twice in a year and the rules are different every time but they're shocked and appalled I'm not up to date.

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

#602

Post by hunterb123 » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

_6pvr wrote: post #600

hunterb123 wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay? What's your point? So was slavery. The point is it violates rights now. SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS! (you guys are the nazis)

What rights? Businesses have the right to refuse service. Governments have always required vaccine verification. This is just whining. There are no rights implications here. Also calling me a nazi isn't really appropriate, I don't think.

Is it though if the government is forcing businesses to check it?

If you're okay with forcing people to show their medical history to drink, I think you can handle a word being thrown at you. Nazi.

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

#603

Post by DrJones1098 » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

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?

If people truly cared about the elderly, they would be forgoing the vaccine so that elderly people in other countries could have their dose.

No one cares one bit about anyone, except for the people that are close to them.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to gas light you for their own self interest.

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

#604

Post by jazzyjackson » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

isoskeles wrote: post #563

_6pvr wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except now I’m supposed to show a digital vaccine record many places I go. Not many open source options exist for reading them either, so I’m just supposed to trust that the data (name, birth date, maybe location) isn’t being sent to some marketing analytics company somewhere. If you think vaccine passports are bad just wait until you hear about all phones...

Sorry bud, I can turn off my phone. I can leave my phone at home. My phone carrier doesn’t sell my location, they just give it to the police if I commit a murder.

I don’t really see what this has to do with vaccine passports (Louisana has a nice app for it, digital drivers license, proof of vaccination checked against a state database) but phone carriers do sell real-time location data to third parties. They were fined a pittance for it: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/fcc-issues-wrist...

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

#605

Post by AlwaysRock » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

TSA jobs cant go away now that they exist. They probably never will. It will look bad for whatever president that does it because they will eliminate jobs and "national security" checks.

Everyone knows its a joke but we will keep doing it.

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

#606

Post by titzer » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

chitowneats wrote: post #595

titzer wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are pretty different things, at pretty different times. We could make bad analogies all day long and end up at some very weird places. Like imagine that COVID was invisible Arab terrorists armed with a gas who killed 600,000+ Americans. I think the response and fear level would be very different. But it's a silly analogy and a real digression from thinking about 9/11 in its own context.

Like covid, the actions of invisible terrorists would be largely out of our control. It's unfortunate so many of us are unwilling to accept that.

You mean, invisible Arab terrorists that are disarmed absurdly well by a vaccine. You see, this is exactly why it's a terrible analogy, because people will just twist it to suit their pre-conceived notions about the current divisive topic, bludgeon those they disagree with, and jump right back into the same damn arguments.

I thought we were reflecting on 9/11. COVID is such a bad analogy. FUCK, it's such a bad analogy.

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

#607

Post by wesleywt » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

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.

What about 650000 American dead makes you cynical about COVID?

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

#608

Post by hirako2000 » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

lonelyPM wrote: post #583

GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

Well said... I feel like someone out there has developed a dashboard like this.

We are pretty good at death counts, it's easy. All the data is there. Tied to anonymised health condition as aggregates.

The problem is how do we even start to evaluate the cost of prevention. Measures? We have equipment and labour costs, that's easy to measure but the data is not made available. But then what is the opportunity cost on those who are inflicted the measures. A person goes on holiday and can perhaps browse a book while queuing for an hour to go through the security checks, a business traveller is simply standing there, unable to even make a phone call due to lack of privacy.

Also, if we spend 1 trillion usd on say the prevention of terrorism, and we "only" suffered 20 death in the United States during that period, it doesn't mean halving the expense would only double the death toll. We put measures and have no tool to measure their effect, high number of variables, and each of their weight evolve dynamically.

I think we better spend time educating the media industry to somewhat control the increasing rate of fear inducing columns published each second. And if they don't learn, regulate them since we are already regulating countless industries for that matter.

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

#609

Post by thecrash » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

goto11 wrote: post #468

bserge wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting their own freedoms. It has worked amazingly well so far. No it isn't. Not any more than it is the goal of burglars to get people to invest in home security. The goal of terrorism is to use attacks on civilians to achieve political goals, like getting Northern Ireland out of the UK or get the US out of the Middle East. Why would terrorists care how much the e…

> Just because something hurt your enemy does not mean it helps you get closer to your goal.

I think that's a good general observation, but a key assumption of terrorism is that hurting your enemy /will/ pressure them to do what you want.

Terrorism is all about out unconventional ways of bringing pain to your enemy, rather than just defeating their military in combat. So I think terrorism can definitely be intended to sow fear, paranoia, overreaction, internal division, etc within the enemy civil society.

Not as the end goal, but as part of the strategy of inflicting paint to pressure them to capitulate.

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

#610

Post by throwaway0a5e » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #185

s1artibartfast wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why lump parents that don't want masks with plane bombers and shooters

Fair. Terrorists have likely killed far fewer Americans with their actions. We are not good at evaluating the less flashy risks to life. Wearing a seat belt saves a lot more lives than checking shoes at the airport, but we'll fight the seat belt a lot more.

100yr ago eugenics proponents were saying the same thing while bemoaning societies unwillingness to fully embrace their solutions. 200yr ago people who wanted to build heavy industry were making the same complaints bemoaning insufficient investment. And so on and so on.

~7 billion people aren't stupid. They just don't share your prioritization of whatever the societal issues you perceive to be most important today are. This trope is just a back handed way to call everyone who doesn't agree with you stupid, or some variation thereof.