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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?

#701

Post by cammikebrown »

corey_moncure wrote: post #647
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…

The CDC collects these statistics. You would find, for instance, that more black people die each year from falling out of bed than they do at the hands of cops while unarmed (Unironically, provably true; look it up before you downvote... ideally no innocent person would die during police interactions). Clearly, whatever motivates policy and politics has no resemblance to a proportional risk-based assessment.

I went ahead and looked it up. According to google, in the US 650 die falling out of bed per year[1], while about 1000 are killed by police, about 20-25% of those police victims being black (while the US black population is around 14%).[2]

Falling deaths are quite common among the elderly. Police shootings, not so much.

  https://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

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

#702

Post by nostromo »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #475
dmarcos wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically I'd go even further than this, I'd argue that all laws that ordinary people are likely to come into contact with in the course of their everyday life should have an expiry date, forcing a debate every x decades as to whether or not they're still fit for purpose. The date could be variable based on the nature of the legislation, but this mechanism wo…

This worked perfectly with the Patriot Act in the US.

In each re-authorization things were removed. And finally it expired completely.

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

#703

Post by yarone »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #550
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 reminds me of "portal travel." It's a half-joke, based on the vision of walking through a portal and showing up at your destination. Of course that's impossible, but... Imagine a portal showing up outside your house, maybe on the back of a truck. It's got all the theater: the wavy green lights, smoke, the whole deal. You wave good bye to your family, walk in, and then you get chloroformed and pass out. Your body…

Ha, thanks for this.

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

#704

Post by chadcatlett »

rtkwe wrote: post #650
stormbrew wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> domestic air travel has traditionally required very weak identification (driver's license). They have been trying to bump that requirement to RealID for years but a lot of states still don't issue it as their default license/ID so less than half of IDs in the US are compliant with the RealID standards. It's been pushed back for years maybe a decade by now? I wonder how long it'll be until it actually gets implement…

Real ID has been implemented in every state and most territories. Not all share their databases with each other, but that isn't a requirement for usage for using the ids for air travel in the US.

After a few big delays, the deadline for having a compliant id for domestic air travel is 2023-05-03.

I personally had a bad experience attempting to get a compliant id when I lived in Arizona. At the time you could select if you wanted a compliant id or a non-compliant id. My wife and I both selected on the form to get compliant driver's license. Unfortunately when the physical licenses came in the mail they had they weren't compliant and had text indicating they weren't valid for federal identification.

We tried to get them to change this and they refused. Friends had experienced the same issue at the time, but I've been told they now have valid ones that you can get more easily.

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

#705

Post by flyingfences »

myohmy wrote: post #699
umvi wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 It would be a highly controversial dashboard, I guarantee it, likely unpopular with both political parties. The problem is that assuaging fear is often more important (to irrational people) than saving lives. For example, guns…

Be careful with that reasoning. Its illegal for the CDC to study gun violence as a public health measure. If that happened it might rank on child mortality rates.

It is not, and never has been, illegal for the CDC to study gun violence. One specific part of their budget that had been earmarked for those studies was reallocated once. That's the extent of the so-called "ban" that the politicians keep harping on about.

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

#706

Post by jlg23 »

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…

We could just start with people dying from starvation or wars globally. My guts tell me, if we can reduce this number, we will reduce the number of terrorist attacks as well.

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

#707

Post by cammikebrown »

extra88 wrote: post #698
jedberg wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government already has my fingerprints, because I had to give them to get a passport (edit: I've been informed this was only because I also did Global Entry) and also when I was in elementary school they fingerprinted everyone and also when I got my driver's license. Pretty much if you're a US citizen they already have your fingerprints.

U.S. passports do not require getting fingerprinted. U.S. Visas require fingerprinting. I don't think fingerprinting kids is universal or even the norm. I haven't found anything that says it's required anywhere. I have found information about parents having their child's fingerprints in their own records and examples of programs emphasizing that only the family has the record, they're not kept by local government, le…

I remember cops coming to my elementary school (this would have been around 1995) and fingerprinting everyone “for fun”.

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

#708

Post by extra88 »

simonklitj wrote: post #653
jedberg wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government already has my fingerprints, because I had to give them to get a passport (edit: I've been informed this was only because I also did Global Entry) and also when I was in elementary school they fingerprinted everyone and also when I got my driver's license. Pretty much if you're a US citizen they already have your fingerprints.

Definitely! Or if you’re a green card/visa holder.

If you need a U.S. Visa, fingerprints are required. U.S. citizens and people from Visa Waiver countries don't need to be fingerprinted.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...

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

#709

Post by mkr-hn »

vowelless wrote: post #674
umvi wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 It would be a highly controversial dashboard, I guarantee it, likely unpopular with both political parties. The problem is that assuaging fear is often more important (to irrational people) than saving lives. For example, guns…

> For example, guns. Very few people die because of mass shootings. Adjusted for how armed Americans are, gun violence in this country is tiny. And seeing what an armed citizenry can do against the full American force (Afghanistan), an armed population is a necessity against tyranny in America.

The ongoing and ramped up tyrannies don't affect the people with guns, so it's not doing much good so far. When the oppressed arm themselves, people who claim opposition to gun control suddenly become very pro-gun control.

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

#710

Post by seph-reed »

Sevii wrote: post #695
seph-reed wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if -- and I know this is a crazy idea -- but what if there was some sort of metric beyond popularity by which things were reported? Maybe even decided? For instance: if there was a free online study (in person test) "critical thinking" series of classes, where you could become accredited as a person who knows at least the basics of how lying works, statistics can be manipulated, science is hard, etc, etc, etc...…

Sure but then politics becomes about controlling what's on those tests.

That's a good thing.

Having a giant political flamewar about how critical thinking should work has good potential to result in mutual destruction.

If you really play it out in your head, critical thinking is pretty hard to abuse because it tends to lean away from blind trust.

Every trick that could be taught to get people not to trust your enemy, is one less way you can take advantage of them yourself.

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