TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

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TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby tak197 » 28 Dec 2009, 18:00

I saw this from Wil Wheaton's Twitter and I had to share it.

http://gizmodo.com/5435675/president-obama-its-time-to-fire-the-tsa

In summary, the TSA has responded to the failed bombing attempt from this past weekend by limiting knowledge of location of the plane and any sort of movement during the last hour of flight. In other words, they are saying "We can't prevent you from getting a bomb on the plane, but we'll our damnedest to prevent you from blowing it up on something important."

Oddly enough, there was another man from the same country who was in trouble with the TSA for spending a lot of time in the bathroom and not coming out when ordered. Why did he not come out? HE HAD THE SHITS!!

As an intelligent forum of international people, what do you think? Is the TSA failing miserably?
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Graham » 28 Dec 2009, 18:04

They've already eased the rules from two days ago.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby tak197 » 28 Dec 2009, 18:08

Well, okay, I'll give you all that. But it's still not addressing the issue: you can STILL get bombs on the plane.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Metcarfre » 28 Dec 2009, 18:13

You will ALWAYS be able to get bombs on a plane, and that's the sad truth of the matter.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby theDreamer » 28 Dec 2009, 18:17

...They reference the fourth bagel in the article.

In a matter of speaking...

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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Arius » 28 Dec 2009, 18:20

metcarfre wrote:You will ALWAYS be able to get bombs on a plane,

Phew... I was worried there for a second.

---

Personally, I don't think we're much safer with all the restrictions. If people wanna kill, they're not exactly going to follow all the other laws that prevent it.

"Oh no, I'm not allowed bring a knife on the plane. Guess I can't kill anyone."
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Alja-Markir » 28 Dec 2009, 18:41

My favorite personal experience was going through a fairly major airport (Denver I think) and going through the security checkpoint which was in a very wide, but not very long room.

So the security passage is a nice wide line, stretching across the width of the room. Great system, makes the checkpoint smooth because you have less people in any given line because there is a wider area to accomodate more people going through at once.

Except from a security standpoint, I found it disturbing. Quite literally twenty feet beyond the checkpoint was a flight gate. It occured to me that if people really wanted to get on that plane, they'd have no trouble getting through the security checkpoint and running through the open gate doorway and straight onto the plane. There were no real physical barriers, hell you could walk around the security scanners with ease, the only thing stopping people was that they'd get in trouble if they tried.

So I sat there, imagining a single informant buying a legitimate plane ticket and passing through security, then idling in a chair near the gate. When the flight crew opens the gate door, he calls his buddies who are waiting in the non-secure section of the airport. They approach the security checkpoint, then pull out firearms and charge through, blowing away whoever they need to and quite possibly making it through the gate door without needing to fire a single shot. All in the span of a few seconds. A few more seconds and they're in the cockpit, which isn't sealed during boarding. Bam, done deal. No time for a security response, nothing.

Hell, I've witnessed airport security responses before. Once, a lady passed out at my gate from some health problem, the desk clerk called for help immediately, yet it took five minutes just for a single security officer to show up and assess the situation, and he then called in the medical teams afterwards, taking another five or so minutes. Meantime the lady could have been dying for all anyone knew.

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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby epocalypse » 28 Dec 2009, 18:51

I heard rumblings of banning smart phones entirely. They can take my iPhone... From my cold, dead hands!
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby NachoManLance » 28 Dec 2009, 19:06

Funny you mention the TSA, I was looking into getting a job as a Transportation Security Officer (the guys who do the screening) not two days ago. Of course, the only opening was in Santa Barbara which is way too far to commute to from my area. Upon further research I came across only more and more criticism against the TSA that I dropped the idea of working in it immediately.

Then I looked into being a flight attendant, realized how much I would HATE that job, and filled out an application for In-n-Out instead.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby steelfox » 28 Dec 2009, 20:31

Next time someone will smuggle a bomb into their ass and then what?

Mandatory body cavity search to board?
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby theo5p » 28 Dec 2009, 20:48

This reminded me of an XKCD cartoon I saw a while back.

http://xkcd.com/651/

Lets hope the terrorists don't get their ideas from web comics.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby TorachiKatashi » 28 Dec 2009, 21:03

Arius wrote:Personally, I don't think we're much safer with all the restrictions. If people wanna kill, they're not exactly going to follow all the other laws that prevent it.

"Oh no, I'm not allowed bring a knife on the plane. Guess I can't kill anyone."


This is pretty much it, too. They set up more and more rules that only serve to punish innocent people, because those are the only people who actually give a shit.

Someone who wants to bomb a plane obviously expects to die, so security could just start shooting suspicious people on sight and it still wouldn't stop them.

As it is, my flying days are probably over if things keep up this way, because I'm simply not in good enough health to spend several hours in an airport so that some idiot can make sure I'm not gonna try to blow up the plane with a bottle of Sprite and IBS medication.

Especially since apparently, I'd be considered a terrorist if my IBS acted up and I had to hold up in the bathroom.

Anyone else remember back in the day, when you only had to show up an hour and a half early?
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Alja-Markir » 28 Dec 2009, 23:00

Personally I'd be more scared of a shoulder mounted surface-to-air missile attack than anything. Relatively cheap and plentiful, relatively easy to smuggle, incredibly reliable against an unprotected system like a passenger jet.

Imagine, a massive cargo freighter sails into New York Harbour, seems like nothing out of the ordinary, then without warning a volley of missiles scream from the deck toward any nearby jet approaching or departing from any of the three major airports right in that vacinity.

It's insane how easy it is to kill people these days. Any idiot can come up with a good way to do it, and with a decent chance of not being caught, assuming they even care about being caught.

Political assassination? So long as you have a known target position and time to prepare, like an upcoming rally or a speech, a mortar attack is a good bet. Effective from incredible ranges compared to even the best sniper rifles, accurate to a frightening degree, difficult to trace the point of origin and flight path via forensics, easy to transport, highly concealable, silent and sudden, fear inducing, no possible countermeasure, variety of potential payloads including white phosporous incendiary...

Wanna increase the odds of a successful escape? Attack from across the country. Drive from the opposite coast on a roadtrip, perform the attack, then immediately return. Assuming your vehicle is not immediately picked out by witnesses or caught on surveillance, you can ride the highways the whole way back with no trouble. After all, most crimes are commited within a relatively small radius of where the perpetrators live, who would think to look for an assassin thousands of miles away from where an attack took place? (Short of monitoring airports, that is.)

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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Arius » 28 Dec 2009, 23:05

Alja has thought far too much about political assassinations and acts of terrorism.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Master Gunner » 28 Dec 2009, 23:18

Not really, I do the same things all the time. When we did a practice emergency evacuation of the school (the kind we'd do in case of a bomb threat or the like), I had a lengthy discussion with friends on the way out how the school's plan is to have us all walk essentially single-file down a narrow path to a parking lot a couple hundred metres away, a road on one side and forest on the other, with a highway on the other side of the forest. If you wanted to kill as many of us as possible, force the school to evacuate and hit us on the way out.

Another option that I thought of is how the area under virtually all the staircases in the school were used as hangouts during break (especially the main one in the foyer). So it would be incredibly easy to stuff a backpack with sealed containers of ammonium phosphate, toss it in with the dozen others, and rig it to go off about 90 seconds after the bell rings for class (by that time the staircase is packed with about 50-70 people). You take out the staircase, kill a couple dozen immediately, with a couple dozen more dying of serious injuries later (foyer would be filled with shrapnel), and it would be next to impossible to trace back which backpack it was (they're generally piled up next to the main support, so if yours is at the back of the pile, enough of the blast would be directed into the pile to incinerate several of them).

And it's talking about things like that which resulted in me being questioned by the police. Loudly threatening another student in the middle of psych class with a knife, on the other hand, resulted in absolutely no-one batting an eye (something both of us are offended about to this day).
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Arius » 28 Dec 2009, 23:22

The LoadingReadyRun forums, on the TSA's no fly list since 2006.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Tim » 28 Dec 2009, 23:28

Can I suggest that we not discuss hypothetical terrorist actions on these forums? It's best not to feed the spiders, whether or not it's obvious that these aren't anyone's actual plans or intentions.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Alja-Markir » 28 Dec 2009, 23:32

Tim, fear of speaking freely is the one true evil we face.

Not terrorists, nor madmen, nor any bogey-man, no matter how popular such ghost stories are. It is the frightened and the panicked, the scared and the senseless who promise the world a safety which we cannot truly have in exchange for sacrificing rights we should never abridge.

I will stop because you asked, and I respect you highly as a friend. But never will I stop simply because it's taboo, or because it might cause foolish people to do or think foolish things.

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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Arius » 28 Dec 2009, 23:34

This thread is going to make for some interesting Google hits.

All we need is a couple paedophiles and a reference to Catcher in the Rye, then the FBI will be all over this.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby epocalypse » 28 Dec 2009, 23:44

Alja-Markir wrote:Tim, fear of speaking freely is the one true evil we face.



You're right Alja, we should be free to talk about... urr.... "Flowers" and.... uh... "bunnies" and.... urhmm....
damn it, vamp, VAMP!!!...
urrr..... "Internet Based Video Game Referencing Nerdy Quirky but Harmless Sketch Comedy".

... yeah, that's the ticket.


I got to say, I think Tim's got a point, because whether or not you are free to say something, you are still responsible for saying it. Furthermore, LRR is fundamentally not a a free public forum, but an owned private one, of which Tim is one of the representatives of the owning party. "Think before you post", people.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby tak197 » 29 Dec 2009, 00:17

Yeah, I didn't intend to hear people talking about "this is the easy way to pull off a terrorist attack."

If I recall correctly, that large airport mentioned above isn't Denver, as I clearly remember that large security checkpoint, but it leads down to a subway station that connects to the gate terminals, with trains leaving every 10 minutes or so.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Unlucky » 29 Dec 2009, 00:27

All this talk of "It'd be easy to kill people, from a purely logical point of view." makes me wonder why there aren't a lot more serial killers out there, roaming free.

Honestly, with the amount of information available on the workings of the police, forensics, ect, I'm honestly surprised anyone is caught anymore for anything they do.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby NachoManLance » 29 Dec 2009, 00:33

Arius wrote:All we need is a couple paedophiles and a reference to Catcher in the Rye, then the FBI will be all over this.


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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby steelfox » 29 Dec 2009, 00:39

NachoManLance wrote:
Arius wrote:All we need is a couple paedophiles and a reference to Catcher in the Rye, then the FBI will be all over this.


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Well that's just awesome. What if we continue to discuss our impending war on... zombies? I agree a well armed cargo freighter could easily take down a plane of... zombies... well that doesn't work.
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Re: TSA: Totally Shit Agency?

Postby Master Gunner » 29 Dec 2009, 00:55

Unlucky wrote:Honestly, with the amount of information available on the workings of the police, forensics, ect, I'm honestly surprised anyone is caught anymore for anything they do.


"Fortunately" people are largely driven by emotions, even psychopaths. So in the vast, vast, majority of murders and serial killers, there's a reason behind them, as twisted as it may be, which can be used to track down who did it. If someone just wanted to kill for the sake of killing, and chose victims by grabbing them off the street (using a true random number generator to choose the locations, so he can't be tracked down that way), they'd be near impossible to catch until they made a mistake, or something that they couldn't control allowed them to get caught. Fortunately though, cases like that are rare, but not entirely unheard of (there are cases of serial killers going for years without being caught).

It's always a bad idea to underestimate the police though, never trust information on police procedure or techniques you get from the tv, and the RCMP always get their man.
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