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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?

#611

Post by DrJones1098 »

anthony_romeo wrote: post #445
sleavey wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 peo…

Understood, though I'd point out that other insurance schemes will have similar sorts of calculations (either directly or indirectly in the form of premiums/annual limits in the US), so the specificity of the NHS isn't particularly helpful here, as it's one model among many. Also, based on my casual skimming of this article: https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg6/chapter/assessing-cost-... , this particular model evalu…

I'm tired of people pretending that everyone on the planet is expendable except Americans.

There are elderly people dying in other countries and perfectly healthy Americans are lining up for the vaccines and acting righteous about saving granny when the reality is they're doing it in their own self-interest.

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

#612

Post by jedberg »

The way you know it is all security theater is TSA pre. I haven't taken my shoes off, my laptop out, or gone through the hands-on-your-head scanner in years, because the TSA pre-check line doesn't require any of that.

Because apparently verifying my ID before arrival at the airport makes me less of a threat.

Or maybe it's the $80 they get every few years that makes me less of a threat...

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

#613

Post by nrclark »

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…

Don't forget that it also costs money.

Nothing like a government-sponsored system to make life visibly better for those who can afford it. And - since it siphons line-space and machines - harder for everybody else.

Sometimes I think that pre-check, toll-roads, and their ilk will take us all to the guillotine if we keep it up long enough.

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

#614

Post by jedberg »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #605

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.

They could easily phase it out. They already have. There is already a rule that an airport can hire a private security company as long as it's approved by the TSA. They could make a small rule change that allows the private security to make their own rules, or just make some of the rules optional, like shoes off.

So we'd still have TSA agents in some places, but for example SFO already opts out of TSA agents. If they could opt out of the shoes off rule they probably would. At that point you've effectively eliminated the TSA without making a big deal about it.

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

#615

Post by awiesenhofer »

fma wrote: post #111
noetic_techy wrote: post #47

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…

This already exists in some cities. Though I would love this to be available in all major cities myself. Here in Vienna for example we have the CAT (City Airport Train) [0]

Its an express train taking you from a city center railway station directly to the airport in about 15 minutes and also allows you to check in and drop off your luggage up to 24h before departure.

It's criticized by locals as too expensive compared to the S-Bahn serving the same connection (just slower/with more stops) but especially for visitors it of course gives you the huge benefit of not having to deal with any luggage on the last day when you already had to check out of your hotel.

[0] https://www.cityairporttrain.com/en/news/unique-in-europe-th...

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

#616

Post by throwaway0a5e »

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…

People are just fine at evaluating risk. It's just that the prioritization of the population is different than the prioritization of HN/Reddit/whatever. "People" aren't bad at stuff. On average, they're about average at it, which is tautologically true.

People don't wanna die in a car crash or from covid but they want to die at the hands of others even less.

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

#617

Post by nickthemagicman »

nradov wrote: post #271
anthony_romeo wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can find CDC estimates of deaths by age group here. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Here's a much more clear data set.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...

To put this into perspective... 36,000 people died of car accidents in 2019.

In the under 50 group around 20,000 people died of Covid.

The under 50 age group makes up around 80% of the population.

Interpret that however you want.

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

#618

Post by jazzyjackson »

hunterb123 wrote: post #543
duxup wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does any of that mean? You're talking about "aren't thinking" but most of your posts just involve nebulous throw away phrases like "People have immunity"... clearly you know that phrase doesn't mean anything right? In the meantime we can all see for ourselves actual impact, real things, in areas where vaccination rates are low. These aren't nebulous concepts like your phrases, they're real.

Real things? Please point to the real things. Case numbers! Case numbers! Hospital rates are NEARLY at capacity!!!! Yeah that has been said over and over. Things are fine. Go outside of the city, noone respects this stuff and hasn't the whole time, noone is dying more than usual. Worry about cars and obesity if you want to make a difference.

:/

just because rural folks don’t care the hospital is full doesn’t mean the hospital isn’t full

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

#619

Post by stormbrew »

jedberg wrote: post #612

The way you know it is all security theater is TSA pre. I haven't taken my shoes off, my laptop out, or gone through the hands-on-your-head scanner in years, because the TSA pre-check line doesn't require any of that. Because apparently verifying my ID before arrival at the airport makes me less of a threat. Or maybe it's the $80 they get every few years that makes me less of a threat...

I mean, I agree in general but it is also likely that they're performing at least some kind of background check on you when you participate in Pre. They definitely do with Nexus. It does make a certain degree of sense as a program if you believe in the premise of the entire security theatre apparatus to begin with. Especially within the US where domestic air travel has traditionally required very weak identification (driver's license).

That is, you're paying them for the privilege of reducing their attack surface a little bit.

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

#620

Post by tehwebguy »

jedberg wrote: post #612

The way you know it is all security theater is TSA pre. I haven't taken my shoes off, my laptop out, or gone through the hands-on-your-head scanner in years, because the TSA pre-check line doesn't require any of that. Because apparently verifying my ID before arrival at the airport makes me less of a threat. Or maybe it's the $80 they get every few years that makes me less of a threat...

Exactly, it will never go away for the same reason the unskippable ads in between turns on the hottest new mobile game will never go away. It's the torture designed to get you to pay up.
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