"Are nailclippers and aftershave the tools of terrorists?"

November 15, 2010 8:07 AM

Bipartisan support should be immediate. For fiscal conservatives, it’s hard to come up with a more wasteful agency than the TSA. For privacy advocates, eliminating an organization that requires you to choose between a nude body scan or genital groping in order to board a plane should be a no-brainer. In the words of Art Carden at Forbes, Full Frontal Nudity Doesn't Make Us Safer: Abolish the TSA
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis (20 comments total)

Security Theater is a waste of money.
posted by entropone at 8:10 AM on November 15, 2010

I don't understand the pull quote. As far as I can tell there are fiscal conservatives in both parties and privacy advocates in neither.
posted by enn at 8:11 AM on November 15, 2010 [6 favorites]

when we outlaw toner cartridges, only outlaws will be able to print.
posted by toodleydoodley at 8:12 AM on November 15, 2010

SLOE outragefilter TSA *yawn*
posted by empath at 8:12 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Do we not already have quite a few TSA nudescanner threads?

Wow, that's not a sentence I ever saw myself typing.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:19 AM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

While I loath the TSA, the author of this article appears to be a complete idiot. He seems to be saying that we can easily get rid of the TSA because the airlines could do a much better job, and terrorists really don't want to bring down planes that bad anyway.

The idea that the airlines honestly care about the comfort and wellbeing of passengers is laughable. Has he flown recently? Airline employees straight up hate their customers. And I have no doubt a cost analysis would leave them feeling that losing a few planes to terrorists was more profitable than comprehensive prevention.
posted by y6y6y6 at 8:19 AM on November 15, 2010

My problem isn't with having government-run airport screening. That seems perfectly valid to me, in fact. My problem is with their ridiculous procedures and constant overreactions. If they weren't running around like chickens with their heads cut off, they'd probably be less expensive, too.
posted by wierdo at 8:20 AM on November 15, 2010

In fact, there are virtually no fiscal conservatives nor privacy advocates in either party, not elected ones anyways.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:20 AM on November 15, 2010

SLOE outragefilter TSA *yawn*

Get groped and move on.
posted by gman at 8:21 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Between National Opt-Out Day and Meg McLain's recent TSA harassment, discontent about the TSA seems to be getting a lot more press these days. It would seem negative public opinion about the agency is reaching a fever pitch. Whether or not it'll be enough to affect the elected Republicans or Democrats (neither of whom may actually include many fiscal conservatives or privacy advocates) is another question. Sorry if it's too much TSA-filter of late, but it's still a topic worth discussing.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 8:28 AM on November 15, 2010

This is when a group like Improv Everywhere should intervene. Hold a mission to show up in huge numbers at a major airport and have everyone demand to be fully hand-searched. This would cause all kinds of delays and the TSA workers, after many hours of groping genitals, would also revolt against these idiotic protocols.
posted by grounded at 8:32 AM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'd be content if we merely rolled back the security protocols back to those of pre-9/11; A metal detector and a canned message letting me know not to let anyone give me a bag to carry on seemed sufficient.

The absurd layers of stupid security measures on top of pointless theater do little more than aggravate passengers and slow everything down. But at this point I think many politicians would be hard pressed to do anything about it for fear of appearing "soft on security". Until someone demonstrates how ineffective the procedures really are in a way that everyone actually pays attention to, we're probably stuck with this.
posted by quin at 8:32 AM on November 15, 2010

TSA is a bipartisan political cash cow. Republicans get to reward large donors with contracts while Democrats get one of the few new opportunities these days to add a large amount of low paid, soon to be unionized Federal Workers who will vote democrat. Everyone wins. Except citizens.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:33 AM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

Israelis laugh at how unseriously Americans deal with airport security
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:35 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

It seems to me that if the TSA actually cared about these complaints they would have a better camera system. As it stands, they seem to just put cameras wherever with no thought to framing or capturing the entire checkpoint area.
posted by wierdo at 8:38 AM on November 15, 2010

The TSA have been perfectly nice and fairly efficient to me recently (although I think it's interesting that a piece of equipment I travel with is no longer so suspicious as to call for a wipe down every time I go through security). I was a bit taken aback, however, with the customs official who contradicted what I was told earlier this year about one of the check boxes on the customs form, and then said "Eh, it doesn't matter either way."
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:38 AM on November 15, 2010

The Israelis are strong! If I fly, I have to go before them, and they will ask me, "What is transportation safety?" If I don't know it, they will cast me out of Ben-Gurion Airport and laugh at the stupid American. That's the Israelis, strong on Tel Aviv!
posted by adipocere at 8:39 AM on November 15, 2010

Do we not already have quite a few TSA nudescanner threads?

Yep. All are currently open.

Nov. 24 is National Opt-out Day from airport back-scatter scanners.

For the First Time, the TSA Meets Resistance.

Does it start now?

posted by ericb at 8:40 AM on November 15, 2010

The article linked by T.D. Strange pretty much convinces me that all airport security issues in the U.S. should be outsourced to Israeli intelligence, and perhaps we can even work out a payment plan, we've been giving them deposits for quite some time now.
posted by dbiedny at 8:43 AM on November 15, 2010

And they pretty much all consist of the same "this sucks, amirite" conversation, as far as I can tell. Has anything newsworthy happened, like a major court case moving forward against the TSA, or someone high on the food chain (like, say, Obama) stating that re-evaluation of the system is in order?
posted by Gator at 8:43 AM on November 15, 2010