Spend over $10 for a gift that costs way less? This boy ain’t stupid.
Guess I happen to be in the minority here. I do NOT believe in security at all costs. I believe in sensible security such as not making a mother empty her baby’s bottle of milk, not harassing Medal of Honor winners, not making a woman using crutches walk without them, etc.
When you get your freedoms taken away little by little, eventually you have no freedoms. When that happens, I have the right to say “I told you so.”
So is it because it was a GIFT you are somehow EXEMPT from the rules that all other travelers are expected to obey? Or is it because it’s an inconvenience to YOU that you’re exempt? Help me out here… I must be missing something. I can’t quite grasp how either, or the two scenarios combined somehow puts you “above the law”!
Ever consider the possibility that MAYBE someone in the government might possibly know more about liquid explosive handling/packaging/assembly than YOU do? MAYBE there’s a good reason for a 3oz limit (then again, maybe there isn’t). Doesn’t really matter - the powers that be have determined that, for whatever reason, 3 ounces is a good compromise. If you know so much more about liquid explosives and structural engineering and why more should be allowed, try submitting your research to the proper people at the proper agencies and make traveling by airlines a better experience for everyone.
Instead, you simply decide it’s a “stupid rule”, and therefore one that you should not obey. So you try to get through security by conscientiously concealing more than your fair share of liquids, and end up holding up the line for everyone else behind you while you’re further scrutinized! If it ain’t worth paying $4.00 to ship (try parcel post), then it ain’t worth making me (and everyone else) wait in line at security while they search your ass. Just throw the shit away if it’s such a worthless gift!
Heck, one better. SWA doesn’t charge for the first check bag.
At least the time waiting will be reduced to one, the time of one person waiting 20 minutes for the luggage to make it to the baggage claim
What’s being missed here is that there is no true security at the airport. The guy was happy to find a “artfully hidden” bottle of hand creme. Yet, he missed the other bottle. He missed the candles (a no-no). He missed the fact that the quart size bottle with the liquids was not taken out of the luggage and scanned separately.
Why not ban all liquids? As I mentioned, it would be easy to have just a small amount of liquids divided among several people and then have them combine it on board.
What scares me is the same people that think there is real security at the airports also want nationalized health care. The government is incapable of being efficient.
Locks are to keep the honest people out. TSA is the lock. Some locks (agents) are of good quality, some locks are crappy (agents).
TSA (locks) gives a false sense of security, thus it being a “theater” as described by JHEM
Criminals will just break the flimsy window usually to the right, left or above the locked door or window to get in.
Terrorists use nefarious means such as using a combination of seemingly innocent liquids such as hand creme to get their misdeeds accomplished. We don’t know what agents in the hand creme that could be used for misdeeds, do we?
Apparently our gubment does, and instituted this rule for a reason. It’s a rule easily lived with and does not infringe on our freedom one scintilla. We can still take hand creme onboard, whether it be 3 ounces or less in the cabin of an airplane or if more, in checked luggage in the cargo hold of an airplane.
Yes it may be in combination of more then one person to bring in an appreciable amount of hand creme, **but it won’t take the misdeeds of one person **by reduciing the volume allowed per individual. This reduces (not eliminate) the chance of one miscreant bringing down an airliner.
Since my nickname used to be “Maytag” because I like to stir shit up 
…WHAT IF the TSA was not with us in this post 9/11 world, would you then say the same if it were an Arganbreight or some other private company charged with providing screening at LAX…? Yes today’s TSA are former laid off UA agents, Cinnibon cashiers…who landed their big break with a government job. Do I sometime think they are clowns? “Yes” do I live with takeing off my shoes and haveing my bag tossed? “Yes”…but that is just how it is right now and will be. REGARDLESS of if 3 co-conspiritors work together to bring 3oz each to combine and make something the point would be just as it was on 9/11 there was a gap in the system that the terrorists had the patience to find and exploit. Remember this simple fact, the TSA have got to be right 100% of the time the terrorists only have to get it right once.
Hell the liquid bombs aren’t anything new, just look at Ramsey Youseff and his resume…he had found a way to make a small device and damn near took out a Phillipeane B747 back in the day with a wet test…he just before that put a device under a seat in a movie theatre and blew some people up. He was trying to pull of that operation Bojanka with blowing several B747’s out of the sky at the same time over the Pacific. The ONLY reason he did not succeed is he got careless mixing some of the liquid in a sink and smoked up an apartment building. The will, and knowledge is out there and been tested. We just have to hope that in the future if it is TSA or someone else that they have been trained enough on what to spot to stop anything before we have a repeat of 9/11.
Cha-ching.
Da “bad boys” try to stay one step ahead…
Yup… and if the theater helps slow them up, even a bit, isn’t it worth it?
towersiren had this a while back… it has to be repeated it is a CLASSIC!!
Not if it diverts money from other more worthwhile ($/life) measures. The correct response to “we must do something” is not doing something, but doing the right thing.
Assessing the risks, costs and benefits of United States aviation security measures:
An assessment of the Federal Air Marshal Service suggests that the annual cost is $180 million per life saved. This is greatly in excess of the regulatory safety goal of $1-$10 million per life saved. As such, the air marshal program would seem to fail a cost-benefit analysis. In addition, the opportunity cost of these expenditures is considerable, and it is highly likely that far more lives would have been saved if the money had been invested instead in a wide range of more cost-effective risk mitigation programs. On the other hand, hardening of cockpit doors has an annual cost of only $800,000 per life saved, showing that this is a cost-effective security measure.
Another take: Assume that all the new airport security measures increase the waiting time at airports by – and I’m making this up – 30 minutes per passenger. There were 760 million passenger boardings in the United States in 2007. This means that the extra waiting time at airports has cost us a collective 43,000 years of extra waiting time. Assume a 70-year life expectancy, and the increased waiting time has “killed” 620 people per year – 930 if you calculate the numbers based on 16 hours of awake time per day. So the question is: If we did away with increased airport security, would the result be more people dead from terrorism or fewer?
Article doesn’t cover this “diversion from other worthwhile measures” that I see. What are the worthwhile measures not being implemented?
Easy to criticize and analyze what we have in place, but what is the right answer if what we have is not working?
Thus far, from what I perceive, what we have is doable and can be improved.
How it can be improved, I don’t know myself, but **if **we have to act on intelligence reports, it’s more prudent to err on the side of caution, in which this 3-1-1 rule seems to do.
As technology unfolds to improve our screening process, I see this 3-1-1 rule going by the way side. But as soon as we fix this process, that cat and mouse game will only find something else for use to dwell on.
Be interesting to see what others would suggest to IMPROVE the current process and not dwell on the isolated instances where TSA has dropped the ball…
You hit the nail on the head. There’s lots of comments about what’s wrong. There are NO comments on what should be done. You can go back to the 60 Minutes segment on the TSA a little while ago. Whatever “pundit” that was on came up with all the problems, but when asked what should be done, I swear he looked like a deer in the headlights.
As to the ROI/cost benefit announcement CRAP, I say this… For those that don’t like it, how many more should/can die at the hands of terrorists before something is done? What’s YOUR life worth? The life of your wife/SO? Child? Just give me a number… What should the “butchers bill” be?
What’s the cost of the tank inerting that has been mandated? What’s the cost of the redesign and install of the PCU on the 737? For those that want to boil it down to the cost per death, what is the dollar figure that would make it worth it in YOUR mind?
The ultimate solution to the security debate (watch the whole clip)
Gotta luv meathead’s facial reactions 
The airlines won’t have to search the passengers no more… they just pass out the pistols at the beginning of the trip, and then pick 'em up again at the end.
ROF 
MAO
I was thinking about this last night while going to work. Another bit of 411 regarding Ramsey Youseff, he was the one who designed built and exicuted the first attempt against the WTC with a truck bomb. He got mad that they didn’t go down with the truck bomb, so when he heard about the AF hijacking in Algeria where they wanted to fly into the Eifal Tower, he thought up 9/11 and went to his uncle Khalid Seik Mohammed…the rest is history.
The TSA, so far IMHO have done their job and what they were put out to do…prevent another catastrophic terrorist event through our aviation system. Keep this in mind as well, they were just created going into 8 years ago (correct me if I’m wrong) they are still working with technology, intel…to keep improving. I think another point that hasn’t come up is the fact that when private firms were charged with keeping screen points staffed…it was the old “The lowest bid gets the contract” from the airline tenants at that airport. Now airlines have no choice in how things are done at a checkpoint. I recall a time…at least at IAD where CO wanted to fit the x-ray machines at the checkpoints with their template for “Acceptable” carry on sizes. Needless to say big daddy UA put their foot down on that. Bottom line is the screen point is not where nor the responsibility to ensure carry on bags are correct in size.
I’ve never had trouble when I’m flying but I’ve had trouble with them before.
Hey damiross… I dont know if they still have this, but you can apply for a security pass with the government… you pay $100.00 a year and you get an ID card and you present it at the security check and they let you go through the airline crew screening line (i guess you can call it the express lane). Makes your hastle 15 mins quicker.
Don’t stress over the crap TSA is causing you… sure its a delay but it is for security. The whole history of America is about making sacrifices for freedom and privileges…think about this… I imagine the TSA agents want to be screening you as much as you want them to be screening you, they have to put up with a thousand bitching people every single day…A TSA agent never has a good day !! People have to have a job thease days and as a veteran and a pilot, I would be perfectly happy to make sacrifices to keep myself and the people flying in my plane secure… even if it means giving up a few things here and there. Not all TSA agents are mindless apes, be kind to them, it will make your trip through the checkpoint faster and it will make their day a little better. Win Win situation right? 
50th post
Clear get’s you past the regular line that checks your ID and boarding pass. All the rest is the same…
Congrats on 50!