• Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 个月前

    The TSA is something that shouldn’t exist in its current form. They very often fail their audit checks and normalize invading your privacy to an extreme degree like body scanners and pat downs. If water bottles are considered potentially explosive then why dump them on a bin next to a line of people where they can go off? This is low grade security theater that inconveniences passengers at best.

    • leisesprecher@feddit.org
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      4 个月前

      It’s security theater through and through.

      Apart from the obvious failings of these checks, think about what kind of damage a single backpack of explosives can do to a packed airport during holiday season. You can literally put a ton of explosives on one of those trolleys, roll it into the waiting area and kill 200 people easily. No security whatsoever involved.

      Reality is, most security measures are designed to keep the illusion of control. Nothing more. Penetration testers show again and again that you can easily circumvent practically all barriers or measures.

      • Tamo240@programming.dev
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        4 个月前

        The goal is not to stop the people in the queue being attacked, its to stop someone boarding a plane with the means to hijack it

        • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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          4 个月前

          They fail gloriously at at that too.

          Whenever they get tested the red teams manage to smuggle in everything needed to hijiack a plane plus a kitchen sink.

          The few times that terrorists tried to board planes, they made it through security and were caught by other passengers.

        • Liz@midwest.social
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          4 个月前

          Yeah, and you don’t need the TSA for that. Just do as they already do: lock the cockpit.

        • KyuubiNoKitsune
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          4 个月前

          They had to do something about the plague of people hijacking planes with bottles of water.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          4 个月前

          Ah yes, it’s okay if we die, just don’t take the corporate infrastructure with you when you go…

    • psivchaz@reddthat.com
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      4 个月前

      It’s basically the only type of jobs program that both sides of our broken government can agree on: petty nonsense that looks like it might do something useful, but really doesn’t, and only inconveniences the poors.

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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      4 个月前

      The main reason that rule still exists is to sell overpriced water. Otherwise they could just ask you to drink some of it to prove it’s water.

        • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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          4 个月前

          Some airports have no place to refill and have only hot water in the toilet sinks. It’s inhumane.

        • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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          4 个月前

          This happened to me after a lunch break going back into the court room for jury duty. Didn’t think about my soda until I got to the checkpoint, used to the TSA’s mentality so figured the rest of it was forfeit. She just tells me to take a drink to show it’s valid. Respect for people doing their job correctly, and using common sense.

    • fermionsnotbosons@lemmy.ml
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      4 个月前

      According to the story I heard as to the origin of the “no liquids over X amount” rule, years ago there was a terrorist that tried to smuggle hydrogen peroxide and acetone - which can be used to rather easily synthesize triacetone triperoxide (TATP, a highly sensitive explosive) - onto a plane in plastic toiletry bottles. They got caught and foiled somehow, and then the TSA started restricting liquids on planes. This was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, if I recall correctly.

      And I happen to know, from a reliable source, of someone who accidentally made TATP in a rotary evaporator in an academic lab. So it seems plausible.

      Not that the rule is actually effective prevention against similar attacks, nor that the TSA even knows what the reason is behind what they do at this point, haha. I just thought it was an interesting story.

      • m4xie@slrpnk.net
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        4 个月前

        hydrogen peroxide and acetone

        So there are worse cleaning chemicals to mix than bleach and vinegar

        • fermionsnotbosons@lemmy.ml
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          3 个月前

          Requires an acid catalyst for the reaction to actually proceed, but yeah, could definitely ruin your day - although a lungful of chlorine gas is nothing to sneeze at either.

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 个月前

      The main reason why it exists is to provide jobs. The number of people who work at the TSA at every airport in every state…no representative wants to cut those jobs.

      • AltheaHunter
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        4 个月前

        I fucking hate that this is a thing. “We can’t stop doing this useless and/or detrimental thing, look at all the work it makes for other people to do!!!” Absolutely bonkers that it’s just a standard political argument.

          • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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            4 个月前

            The worst part is if people only worked two or three days a week corporations would still be profitable and everyone would have a job.

            • smb@lemmy.ml
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              4 个月前

              i once heared something like this:

              “the idea of having more than those who have nothing is the very only reason shareholders can ever imagine someone would work for at all, thus they also falsely believe they would do something good when enforcing this by removing everything from those who already are vulnerable and thus create a living example of how you would end when you don’t help them rob even more.”

          • vonxylofon@lemmy.world
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            4 个月前

            It shouldn’t exist? I’d like to see you pay for your medical expenses out of pocket.

            P. S. No, I am not American.

            • Gormadt
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              4 个月前

              Here in the states when we say “medical insurance shouldn’t exist” what we mean is “the medical insurance industry shouldn’t exist”

              Basically the cluster fuck of insurance companies we have now shouldn’t exist, we should just have a single payer type system where medical expenses are paid for through our tax dollars. In its current state it’s a nightmare to deal with.

            • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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              3 个月前

              A lot of private insurance in the US amounts to paying a couple hundred monthly to have the insurance and then they deny payment for basically anything and everything. So you pay them to pay out of pocket anyway.

              Just got state insurance which covers everything, but very few offices accept it.

              So yeah. Insurance in the US is super fucked up and people go without healthcare, even if they have insurance because they simply can’t afford it.

            • not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world
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              3 个月前

              Yeah I guess the kind of Single Payer model I prefer can be conceptualised as “insurance.” But it feels more like health care is taxpayer funded. The similarity to insurance is just details for the detail nerds.

        • BurningRiver@beehaw.org
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          4 个月前

          “The government made 25% of my district unemployed, why didn’t I get reelected?”

          Ask it from that side and you have your answer.

          • AltheaHunter
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            4 个月前

            I wasn’t asking a question. I understand why politicians do it, I just think it’s a sign of a terrible system.

      • Bumblefumble@lemm.ee
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        4 个月前

        I mean if a state removed the TSA and spent the money on something else, surely they could use the money to create as many jobs as they removed but in an actual useful field.

            • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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              4 个月前

              I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but I wouldn’t vote for a republican who got me a job, and I probably wouldn’t vote for anyone who got rid of my job (unless they were otherwise really great). So at least for me, getting rid of the job means you lose my vote and replacing it doesn’t necessarily gain my vote.

        • nehal3m@sh.itjust.works
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          4 个月前

          No, it’d be more useful just on account of the harm they are not doing. I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do instead, hell, do a huge UBI experiment and just let them chill. Might as well.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        4 个月前

        If it’s just for the jobs we can put them to work doing something useful like carrying bags for old people in the airport. Literally anything would be more useful.

    • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
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      3 个月前

      They treat people like cattle because they are protecting the airplanes and the airline’s liability, not the people onboard or in line to board.

      If people think it’s unsafe people won’t pay up to fly.

    • akakunai@lemmy.ca
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      3 个月前

      I recently realized that I have been boarding planes for years with multiple boxes of razor blades in my carry-on.

      …Not a single checkpoint picked them up.

    • LunchMoneyThief@links.hackliberty.org
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      3 个月前

      It just hasn’t had the right public messaging behind it. I can think of a few historically recent things that are security theater but have been successfully accepted by the public because of slogans, social engineering and authoritative messaging. TSA just needs their own marketing blitz.

    • Vilian@lemmy.ca
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      4 个月前

      To be fair a explosion in a on the side of a line not gonna kill anyone, now a explosion in the airplane windows, maybe?, i get their argument, not that’s a good argument

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        4 个月前

        The major airports have huge crowds. And we know from unfortunate experience that suitcase bombs can kill hundreds of people.