TSA at it again...

[mvpel]

I guess you don't have to worry about the notorious instability of TATP if you don't care if you blow yourself up while mixing it.

[reteo]

But you could have brought weapons on to the plane and injured people!

Funny people are more scared of being shot in a plane, after all that searching, than they are walking down a street where anyone is permitted to have a firearm.

Correction: People are scared of dying in a massive fireball at 32,000 feet caused by a stray bullet in the electrical system... or perhaps just a crash from the above altitude for the above reason.

People have been known to survive gunshots.  I don't think I've ever heard of someone surviving a gunshot followed by a landing at terminal velocity, with or without multiple tonnes of metallic padding.

It all comes down to one simple fact.  People watch WAY too many movies.  Or maybe its Hollywood markets way too many unrealistic movies.

[aries]

But you could have brought weapons on to the plane and injured people!

Funny people are more scared of being shot in a plane, after all that searching, than they are walking down a street where anyone is permitted to have a firearm.

Correction: People are scared of dying in a massive fireball at 32,000 feet caused by a stray bullet in the electrical system... or perhaps just a crash from the above altitude for the above reason.

People have been known to survive gunshots.  I don't think I've ever heard of someone surviving a gunshot followed by a landing at terminal velocity, with or without multiple tonnes of metallic padding.

It all comes down to one simple fact.  People watch WAY too many movies.  Or maybe its Hollywood markets way too many unrealistic movies.

People have survived similar things

http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffallers.html

[reteo]

*chuckle* I know there have been people able to survive freefall.  However, the question is, if you already have a gunshot wound in or near a vital area, and are already losing blood, doesn't that vastly reduce the chances for survival upon impact?

Besides, I am talking about what the "people" are scared of in relation to guns, not what is physically possible, or what is realistically expectant of such a chance situation.

[aries]

*chuckle* I know there have been people able to survive freefall.  However, the question is, if you already have a gunshot wound in or near a vital area, and are already losing blood, doesn't that vastly reduce the chances for survival upon impact?

Besides, I am talking about what the "people" are scared of in relation to guns, not what is physically possible, or what is realistically expectant of such a chance situation.

People are scared of pistol grips and tanged magazines. Also the color black on a good and a non-wooden stock.

[Radical_Teen]

No, people are afrade of guns becauce the cops are going around shooting random citizans.

[reteo]

No, it's because the movies are showing the opposite.

Never underestimate the power of a liberal media... If Hollywood can convince millions of people to watch their crap, then convincing people that Police=good and terrorists are everywhere shooting random people should be a walk in the park.

[PowerPenguin]

The bullet thing is pretty much bunk. They did a thing about it on Myth Busters.

[Kat Kanning]

Screeners disciplined over leaving post empty
TSA says man passing by Hobby checkpoint minor problem; experts call it major lapse

By HARVEY RICE
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

An incident in which a New York man was arrested after walking through an empty Hobby Airport security post has led to disciplinary action against the screeners and warnings from security experts, who call it a serious lapse.

Officials with the federal Transportation Security Administration insist, however, that the July 31 episode was a minor problem in a normally efficient operation. It was the second time in a five-week period in which screeners' handling of passengers at that checkpoint came under question.

"I think somebody should go and check very deep into the security system and see what's going on in this place," said Offer Baruch, former security director for El Al Israel Airlines in Jordan and now a consultant with Infrastruct Security Inc. in Houston.

The crew of four screeners was admonished and retrained after authorities viewed a videotape showing the post was unstaffed when Darrell Raymond and his 7-year-old daughter walked through it on the way to their plane.

He spent 10 hours in jail
Raymond, a 29-year-old Brooklyn resident, and his daughter were asked to leave the plane and he was charged with criminal trespass. He spent about 10 hours in the Harris County Jail.

His daughter, Myasia, had been visiting her grandparents in Houston and he had flown here to take her home, according to Raymond and his Houston attorney, Troy Pradia.

They were concerned about missing the 11:30 p.m. AirTran Airways flight, the last one that night from Hobby, Raymond told the Houston Chronicle. He said he saw no one at the screening station when he entered Concourse C.

"I waited and looked around, then went through," he said. "Someone came out and started yelling at me and said I can't do that."

TSA officials agree that Raymond voluntarily returned to the screening area and walked through the metal detector.

"(The TSA agent) never told him to wait," Pradia said. "He asked if she wanted to search him and she said she didn't want to."

Raymond said he and his daughter then boarded their flight.

Vernon Baker, federal security director at Hobby, said the supervisor and three of the four screeners in that crew were absent from their posts. He pointed out where the remaining screener was standing, out of sight in a hallway leading to a break room.

Baker said the lone screener heard the metal detector alarm and intercepted Raymond, who returned and walked through the detector, again sounding the alarm. Raymond said that the alarm did not sound.

Baker said Raymond and Myasia then boarded their flight, even though the screener had asked him to wait until she could determine what had set off the alarm.

"I think it was just a misunderstanding," Baker said. "She asked him not to proceed, and I guess he didn't understand."

Raymond said a ticket agent asked him to leave the aircraft and he was handcuffed in front of his distraught daughter. In addition to a day's work he lost, he said, the incident has cost him a $100 bondsman's fee, $1,500 in legal fees and a $230 airline ticket he had purchased for his now-canceled court date.

"If I was a bad guy, I would not have stopped to look around and (would have) gone straight on the plane," he said. "And no one would have even noticed."

Baker said he viewed the videotape from surveillance cameras and determined that the screeners were to blame because they were not at their posts. He contacted Assistant District Attorney Andrew Leuchtmann, who dropped the charge.

He added, however, that it would be unfair to consider the oversight a sign of serious security problems. "We have a well-run operation," he said.

But Baruch and two other airport security experts said the incident was a security lapse that indicates inadequate training and supervision.

"It's a dangerous and serious error and, to me, it's an indication of very sloppy management," said Charles Slepian, chief executive officer of Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center in Tigard, Ore.

Earlier incident
Issy Boim, who helped design El Al's security system and was an adviser to the White House Commission on Aviation and Security during the Clinton administration, said a screener should be visible at all times. He said the lapse reflects what he considers TSA management's failure nationwide to train its agents adequately.

The incident occurred five weeks after screeners at the same station came under scrutiny for allowing a Jordanian immigrant with suspected bomb parts to enter the boarding area.

Security experts also criticized the screeners for failing to call the FBI to question the man, who then flew to Atlanta before being interviewed. FBI agents finally cleared the man of any links to terrorism.

[BaRbArIaN]

If you want to instigate with them, dare to press your free speech rights on your t-shirt.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/25/tshirt_i_am_not_a_te.html

Here's one that says "I am not a terrorist" in arabic on it.  Lots of laughs flying with that one I'm sure.

[PowerPenguin]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the TSA may have jacked my magazine. They took all my crap out (then the frikin national guard did it again right before I got on!!!), then made me put it back in. I could have thus misplaced it myself, but who knows.

BTW, In my experience, older TSA men are a LOT better than younger women. Thoughts on this?

A note on the national guard. I'm not a violent person by any means, but most of these national guard people were small women. It kind of pissed me off, considering that I'm tall and could have easily kicked them over if there weren't consequences. Few things irritate me as much as this, because after all, in the state of nature, such people with "short man's/women's syndrome" would be asking how high to jump from me, not the other way around.

Anyway, it's over now for three months or so...

[mvpel]

If you want to instigate with them, dare to press your free speech rights on your t-shirt.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/25/tshirt_i_am_not_a_te.html

Here's one that says "I am not a terrorist" in arabic on it.  Lots of laughs flying with that one I'm sure.

But then again, maybe they're right, maybe they should go ahead and confiscate Congressional Medals of Honor from octegenarian war heroes instead of scrutinizing young middle-eastern men flying on one-way tickets purchased with cash.  Maybe young Muslim men playing the game of fooling fellow airline travellers into thinking that they're going to die in a firey ball of wreckage is an acceptable form of civil disobedience.

Sure.

[Russell Kanning]

I liked the cartoon. I guess I took it differently than you did.
It is so horrible that people died in NYC .... and not quite as bad that the government hassles people in the airport now. They kill us then enslave us. I say "No".

[FTL_Ian]

Hey Russell, whatever happened to the TSA's threatened "civil assessment" from last year?  Did you get any further harassment over that?

[Russell Kanning]

I get bills.