Peachy… back to the issues. dami presented his solution/alternative awhile back (profiling), what is yours?
Its simple. More intensive screening for muslims and middle east looking people for explosives. More intensive screening for black males and young white males for drugs. Screen failed businessmen and emo-looking teenagers for suicide notes.
Stereotyping, or “profiling” is the best tool out there. Stereotypes wouldn’t be so popular if they weren’t true. I’m not saying that they’re the only ones who do what I implied that they do but if statistically, undeniably, Cubans committed more car thefts in a certain area than any other group of people (grouped by age/race, nat. whatever) then who would you keep your eye on more standing beside a CL-class Benz? A Cuban or a “yuppie”?
Stereotyping may be offensive, and may not be “politically correct”, but it freaking works.
Show or not, everyone is still “seemingly” treated the same way. With you’re profiling argument, you leave a large percentage of the population out of the screening process. What then prevents those that wish to inflict harm to not use someone who fits a stereotype?
I think it is funny as hell we are still beating this topic after over a month. I can’t wait to see everyone wrap their hands around a good idea everyone agrees on and hug. 
If I say 1+1 is 2, but subject B says, “Actually, 1+1 is 3”, it will be impossible for me to want to hug them. 
What was the topic again?
Say Good night Gracie!!!
Strong profiling is not mathematically optimal for discovering rare malfeasors - William H. Press,
Department of Computer Science and School of Biological Sciences, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78703; and Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545
Where the hell did you pull that out of Mark?
Nevermind…don’t want to know.
I heard about this on Laura Ingraham’s show today and I was hoping it was a joke. NO JOKE!!!
Playmobil Security Checkpoint
http://www.amazon.com/Playmobil-3172-Security-Check-Point/dp/B0002CYTL2
But you have to read the reviews for the toy before you can truly appreciate it Rob!
http://forum.digital-digest.com/images/smilies/z7shysterical.gif Oh My… Now that’s some funny sh$t.
The fundamental problem is TSA has an unwieldy problem, and an ordinary workforce – including the architects of the system.
What you want is to nail the top risks and facilitate common sense. Intercept most pieces of metal and anything we can identify as an explosive. Look for ways to detect hardware and materials that pose the greatest threat while causing the minimum of delay to the millions of non-terrorist travelers. I think the few minutes of xray and metal screening is a reasonable cost. TSA’s challenge is to make that encounter valuable by actually reducing risk.
The current patchwork of rules are mostly reactive (fighting the last war) and internally inconsistent (e.g. the large empty bottle vs. large nearly-empty bottle). TSA on site does make the final call (i.e. they do have discretion) but there’s often no common sense, and no effective form of appeal.
Still, I think {put on helmet} that damiross did go off the deep end on this. At times it sounded like he advocates no screening at all. I think we agree on objecting to security theater, especially the rules that are onerous but ineffective. But the elusive COMMON SENSE, once found, cannot magically eliminate my inconvenience and restrictions, while the bad guys still reliably get caught.
I really liked Silentnite’s long missive, mostly the description of ordinary people (in TSA) implementing a complicated thing with inevitable mistakes. Also some good examples of turning simple things into weapons. There’s a limit to how well we can cleanse the aircraft of threats.
Profiling is not going be effective either, because there’s always terrorist who can look ordinary and not draw attention. So profiling = watch lists = fruitless and brainless.
We can definitely improve upon the rules we have now, for greater consistency and a crisper focus on realistic threats. TSA needs a renewed commitment to training with common sense. I need to hear regular reports on TSA testing, scoring the screeners on how well they detect things that an agent is trying to slip past them.
The screening methods I think are worthwhile are x-ray and metals like we have now (but with steady improvements like THz imaging, chemical detection, face/pupil identification, etc.) and random passenger interviews like the one I got boarding a plane in Frankfurt.
There is no way to provide perfect security, and no way to provide decent security with no inconvenience. But we can do a lot better.
[quote=“azav8r”]
DAMN JACKPOT!!! If you don’t laugh until your sides hurt something is wrong…ok maybe it is just me but still that is damn funny!!!
Thank you for the insight Mr. Hawley.
Where by the way is the Emoticon with the horse being beat with a stick? 
http://4fxearth.net/phpBB2/smilies_mod/upload/1beb8b2ae6d61633f35d740313c6c610.gif http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v214/crispini/beathorse.gif http://www.vjforums.com/images/smilies/deadhorse.gif http://www.fightingarts.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/deadhorse.gif
PERFECT!!
Touche’. 
I do sound like a bureaucrat.
But the rest of you (with some exceptions) sounded like angry metalhead kids – everything sucks, trash it all. All complaints, no solutions. Disbanding TSA and starting over is not a realistic option, and you’d just repeat your mistakes anyway. Suppose you’re the new TSA administrator – so what would you do?
The dead horse leaned over and explained that the herd has moved on, which is disappointing – this group does have some rare expertise for answering that difficult question.