[HN Gopher] 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our sh...
___________________________________________________________________
20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at
airports?
Author : prostoalex
Score : 431 points
Date : 2021-09-08 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ocregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ocregister.com)
| j_m_b wrote:
| 20 years after Covid: Will we ever stop putting up plastic and
| wearing masks?
| jacquesm wrote:
| I haven't had to remove my shoes in airports for a decade or so,
| I suspect this is mostly a US thing at this point.
| [deleted]
| u801e wrote:
| After the number of deaths and economic impact that resulted from
| the pandemic, I would be perfectly fine if we completely
| eliminated any type of security check associated with air travel.
| I would rather air travel be much like traveling by train, bus,
| or taxi instead of what it is now.
| q1w2 wrote:
| How would you eliminate the risk of hijackings?
| bradstewart wrote:
| Reinforced cockpit doors with strict policies in place for
| when the pilots can open it, which is what we do now (in the
| U.S. at least) even with all of the TSA stuff.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Those doors don't stop a hijacker from executing
| stewardesses until the pilot opens the door.
| u801e wrote:
| This source[1] claims that the probability of getting
| hijacked while on a commercial flight is 0.000004%. On
| the other hand, the case fatality rate of covid-19 is
| around 2% based on what I'm able to find.
|
| So why are we worried about possible plane hijackings
| when a lot of people don't seem to be overly worried
| about something that's many times more risky.
|
| [1] https://findanyanswer.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-
| plane-ge...
| u801e wrote:
| With the current measures in place (reinforced cockpit
| doors), it's not a significant enough risk to worry about.
| 123jay7 wrote:
| "Let's let anyone who has money ride in a plane that costs 96
| million dollars without checking if they are carrying a
| weapon."
| makecheck wrote:
| Remember that airport security was not the _only_ thing that
| changed. When they note that there have been fewer incidents,
| etc., we _have_ to factor in things like reinforced cockpit
| doors, crew retraining, etc. and not just whatever procedures
| pass for "security" at the airport.
|
| I am also a bit skeptical that the much more complex new scanning
| machines are _actually_ more effective at catching things than
| metal detectors.
|
| Meanwhile, we have to acknowledge the serious threats
| _introduced_ by inefficient processes. The one that scares me is
| the unbelievable crowd sizes that now form at virtually every
| major airport. There is simply nothing secure about a giant crowd
| and it is ridiculous when the insecure crowd exists _because of
| "security"_!
| likpok wrote:
| The new scanning machines will see things like paper or plastic
| in your pocket, so they can definitely see a lot more than
| metal detectors. You may think that's irrelevant, but it's not
| nothing.
|
| It's worth noting that 9/11 introduced a new threat that people
| hadn't really considered before: using planes as weapons. If
| you want to kill a bunch of people in the US there's lots of
| places with big crowds. A commercial airline r is a significant
| force multiplier: the OKC bombing killed "only" 168 people and
| the Las Vegas shooting only 68. 9/11 was an order of magnitude
| over that.
| isodev wrote:
| Isn't this one of the main aspects of "terrorism" - while tragic,
| the act itself is merely trigger to induce fear and impact
| society in more subtle (and long lasting) ways.
|
| e.g we get screened, we fear people who look "suspicious" (even
| when they are just normal people) etc.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Certainly not.
|
| People who were paying attention back then knew this. This kind
| of intrusion is a ratcheting function.
|
| I feel like HN is a sort of older crowd, so a good chunk of those
| who can read this probably remember pre-9/11 travel, but for
| those that don't:
|
| I have, nearly every day of my adult life, carried a Swiss Army
| Knife. It's insanely handy, and not at all something that would
| be parsed as a weapon. (Even in 2021, the models I favor are
| legal for personal everyday carry in the UK, which is at this
| point somewhat notorious for restrictive knife laws.)
|
| Before 9/11, I carried it on the plane, in my pocket. I was also
| through security in mere moments -- sure, we still emptied our
| pockets, and took off big belt buckles (not me, but I live in
| Texas, so I saw it often) or chunky jewelry that might set off
| the metal detector, but security was a very very quick process.
|
| Nobody cared how much liquid you had in your carry-on.
|
| And we were almost exactly as safe then as we are now. Security
| expert Bruce Schneier has pointed out repeatedly that the only
| things that REALLY made a difference post-9/11 were (1) the
| reinforced cockpit door and (2) the now universal understanding
| that passengers must resist.
|
| Everything else is bullshit theater. *And in point of fact TSA is
| very, very bad at their job, and has NEVER prevented an attack.*
| t-writescode wrote:
| And one big thing that used to happen that doesn't anymore:
|
| * Family would stay together basically right up to the gate.
| Eating dinner together, possibly, before a flight was had, or
| picking people up right from the plane, in situations where
| half the family flies away and the other half stays.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Yeah, for sure. "Picking someone up at the airport" also
| meant YOU would park somewhere, and then possibly even meet
| them AT THE GATE.
|
| The other thing the airlines pushed in under the guise of
| "security" was insisting that everyone have photo ID matching
| their ticket name. Prior to that, they couldn't insist on
| this.
|
| As a result, a secondary market for tickets existed. You'd
| see "for sale, male DFW to JFK" for such-and-such a flight in
| these forums -- which, of course, only existed because the
| airlines (then as now) charged EXTORTIONATE fees to change a
| ticket.
|
| The airlines hated this, and so because "9/11" they pushed
| through the ID requirement and killed this market. Even
| though, it bears noting, that 100% of the 9/11 hijackers had
| valid ID.
| rdl wrote:
| Our best shot at ending the TSA security theater was when the
| Covid biosecurity theater started -- TSA lines seem optimized for
| contagion. We didn't then, so I don't think we ever will.
| bedhead wrote:
| Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We
| have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that
| elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a
| lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11
| reaction are eerie.
| aeoleonn wrote:
| The Hegelian dialectic inherent in both.
|
| A dialectic method of historical and philosophical progress
| that postulates (1) a beginning proposition called a thesis,
| (2) a negation of that thesis called the antithesis, and (3) a
| synthesis whereby the two conflicting ideas are reconciled to
| form a new proposition.
| Pius_IX wrote:
| Wow, I got to hand it to you! 'communist-aligned socio-
| economic elites' is the most creative code for 'the Jews' I
| have heard in quite a while.
|
| Oh, and you confused 'ironic' and 'coincidence' but I guess
| that hardly matters.
|
| Edit: Oh, the usual. Editing out all the antisemitic stuff
| once somebody calls you out for it. At least don't run away
| once someone questions your shitty beliefs.
| aeoleonn wrote:
| Actually you must have started writing that right after I
| deleted that part about "communist-aligned socio-economic
| elites".
|
| I deleted it because it was imprecise--
|
| The dialectic switches between communism and capitalism
| depending on A/B testing of political revolution messaging.
| They're both.
| tootie wrote:
| I was thinking the opposite. If taking off my shoes results in
| a 0.0001% decrease in the chance of a plane blowing up, then
| why not? It's not really inconvenient. Same with masking. It's
| not inconvenient so why not? Even if it's all theater, theater
| has some value.
| newswasboring wrote:
| There is a mountain worth of difference. The policies enacted
| for COVID have a very specific target, has been shown to work
| repeatedly, and deviating from them caused decline in the KPI
| its trying to maintain. Its nothing like TSA.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Ok then what's the target? Eradication of the virus is not
| achievable and neither is full vaccination of the entire
| population. I have yet to hear any hard numbers for removal
| of "safety" measures from any politician when enacting
| lockdowns/mandates.
|
| I think you're fooling yourself if you believe there's some
| hard target.
| newswasboring wrote:
| The target is to save lives. If the threat is still there,
| we need to keep the safety measures. And covid measures
| have always been dynamic. Safety measures have been removed
| or reintroduced based up on very hard statistics man. I
| don't know how you don't see that.
|
| edit: My first sentence was a bit garbage. The target is to
| save lives from covid and avoid its spread. Hospital
| utilization and mortality rate from the disease are good
| KPIs for that. Almost all responsible countries are at
| least trying to follow those KPIs.
| abstractbarista wrote:
| That may be the target, but the real outcome is simply
| delaying those deaths, spreading them out more over time.
| mbesto wrote:
| > That may be the target, but the real outcome is simply
| delaying those deaths, spreading them out more over time.
| reply
|
| Don't we all die eventually? What's your point then?
|
| Are you saying that if people get COVID they'll all die
| of COVID related complications *eventually*? Because
| that's not necessarily true. If someone is the 101st
| person who needs a ventilator and all 100 ventilators are
| being used by COVID patients, then that person likely
| dies and they could have been recovered.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > the real outcome is simply delaying those deaths,
| spreading them out more over time.
|
| _Which is still a good outcome_ , because you don't want
| to overwhelm the healthcare system to the point that it
| can't handle anything that isn't COVID.
|
| That was the whole point of the early-pandemic "flatten
| the curve" campaigns.
| nradov wrote:
| The threat will never go away, but fortunately
| vaccination cuts the risk of death to virtually zero.
| SARS-CoV-2 is now endemic in the worldwide human
| population, plus several animal species, so unlike
| smallpox or polio it can never be eradicated. Obviously
| we can't keep the safety measures in place forever, so
| what are the quantitative exit criteria?
| CountDrewku wrote:
| >The target is to save lives. If the threat is still
| there, we need to keep the safety measures.
|
| Ok your argument just fell apart. Do we not always have
| the "need" to save lives? The "threat" is never going
| away.
|
| That's ambigous and completely subjective. What is is not
| is an objective measure of any sort. Which means it
| continues indefinitely until our leaders decide
| otherwise.
|
| The fact you cannot give me a set time when it will end,
| or what status we need to meet for all of the safety
| measures to end is pretty telling.
|
| >I don't know how you don't see that.
|
| Because you have no data or facts to back up your claim.
| You can't even explain it yourself.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| You are being Fox-news-level combative about your
| hobbyhorse here. Others have explained why you are way
| off base.
|
| What would you have us do? Dispense with masks and
| vaccines and just let the chips fall where they may?
| That's madness. COVID is a threat. It's best to work to
| counteract that threat using the best tools we have
| available, which are pretty simple: masks, distance, and
| vaccination.
|
| >The fact you cannot give me a set time when it will end,
| or what status we need to meet for all of the safety
| measures to end is pretty telling.
|
| It kinda feels like you're demanding to talk to the
| manager of coronavirus here.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Give me the numbers and the objective measurement of what
| we need to meet for this to happen. Why is this hard for
| you?
|
| >What would you have us do? Dispense with masks and
| vaccines and just let the chips fall where they may?
| That's madness. COVID is a threat.
|
| >You are being Fox-news-level combative about your
| hobbyhorse here.
|
| While you're at it stop with the strawman and ad-hominem
| attacks. What it looks like is you have nothing to
| support the idea that this will stop once we meet a
| certain "threshold".
|
| All I'm asking is what the threshold is. Are you really
| sure I'm the combative one in this situation?
| rspeele wrote:
| I'm not in charge of making public policy, but the target
| that makes sense to me is hospital capacity.
|
| It seems that since COVID is highly contagious and not
| going away, we are all going to get exposed to it and have
| to fight it off with our immune systems eventually.
|
| Being vaccinated to train your immune system before your
| first bout with COVID seems to greatly improve your
| outcome. In my state currently COVID is 15x more deadly for
| an unvaccinated person than a vaccinated one. So it made
| sense to try to limit the spread as much as possible while
| we were waiting for vaccines to become available, because
| the difference between "everybody gets it eventually, with
| no vaccine" and "everybody gets it eventually, but most
| were vaccinated first" is a significant number of deaths
| avoided.
|
| Now that the vaccines are widely available and pretty much
| everybody who wants to be vaccinated, is, the only reason I
| see to continue with restrictions is to keep the rate of
| infection slow enough that the hospitals aren't overwhelmed
| and can continue to serve everybody who needs medical care
| (COVID or not). That threshold is being hit in some states
| in the US, so I can understand why some restrictions are
| still needed. Eventually I would think we will accumulate
| enough immunity from vaccination + natural infection that
| we don't have a hospital capacity problem anymore.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| For anyone who still believes the non-pharmaceutical
| interventions are effective, trying taking this quiz:
|
| https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/
| [deleted]
| MrOwen wrote:
| This feels potentially disingenuous. Why are all the graphs
| only until mid-April/May? Of course states with higher
| density populations are going to see more
| spread/death/hospitalizations. Counts per 100k people don't
| show the whole picure. How does this site clearly
| demonstrate that restrictions don't work? How can you know
| what might have happened without restrictions?
| dmarcos wrote:
| It's not cynical when looking at the incentives. Once a rule is
| in place for "safety" reasons the political cost to remove is
| really high (what if something bad happens?). Politicians won't
| touch it. That's why I think exceptional measures should expire
| automatically (on a date or when a hard condition is met)
| q1w2 wrote:
| That and the fact that one terrorist actually packed his
| sneakers with explosives and tried to detonate them on a
| plane.
| mike00632 wrote:
| Right now most everyone has a sense of what it would be like
| to go back to normal pre-COVID life. I'm starting to lose a
| sense of what it would be like to go back to pre-War-On-
| Terror normalcy.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >Politicians won't touch it.
|
| Some politicians won't touch it.
| dopamean wrote:
| I agree fully re: expiration dates. IIRC the patriot act had
| an expiration date and it took nearly two decades for it to
| actually expire because it kept being reauthorized. It
| finally did expire last year and was not reauthorized and I
| suspect that is because we've actually already slipped far
| enough down the slope to no longer need that particular set
| of rules.
|
| So I support the expiration date idea. I just wish there was
| a way to implement it such that it actually had the desired
| effect.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| >That's why I think exceptional measures should expire
| automatically
|
| I'd go even further than this, I'd argue that _all_ laws that
| ordinary people are likely to come into contact with in the
| course of their everyday life should have an expiry date,
| forcing a debate every _x_ decades as to whether or not they
| 're still fit for purpose. The date could be variable based
| on the nature of the legislation, but this mechanism would be
| fantastic for forcibly clearing out a lot of society's
| "technical debt".
|
| This mechanism in my opinion would have stopped the lingering
| damage from moronic wars on abstract concepts. There would
| have to be some exceptions of course, things like fundamental
| liberties and human rights for example can't ever be
| negotiable in a civilised society. There's also an awful lot
| of very sector-specific legislation which probably doesn't
| need to be directly re-written every couple of decades too,
| although society at large won't be coming into contact with
| it much either so it's not really in the scope of the goal
| which is to stop yesterday's issues leaving nasty remants for
| today's societies.
| nostromo wrote:
| This worked perfectly with the Patriot Act in the US.
|
| In each re-authorization things were removed. And finally
| it expired completely.
| throaway46546 wrote:
| I think that would just cause issues like with the debt
| ceiling, but instead of a "government shutdown" we could
| have critical laws expiring and their renewal being held
| hostage.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| This would fit quite nicely into another fairly radical
| idea which is to reform our countries as "zero party
| democracies". It strikes me that a lot of political ills
| come from within _parties_ rather than _governments_ due
| to the gulf between "party" and "country" and all the
| conflicting loyalty it causes. We could abolish parties
| altogether and instead elect all our representatives
| directly as independents, who would in turn appoint the
| executive branch from among themselves for a fixed period
| of time. We could even deprive the media of their
| ridiculous circus around general elections by abolishing
| them too and instead just having rotating by-elections in
| each seat which gives you the same amount of democracy
| but far less artificial conflict. Admittedly, this would
| work a lot better in parliamentary systems and would need
| to be adapted for presidential ones.
|
| There's no "us versus them" in this scenario, just "us".
| This approach immediately takes the poison out of the
| barb and makes politics far less adversarial. Politicians
| would be forced to rely on the strength of their
| arguments and the quality of their local representation
| rather than the colour of their rosette to get re-
| elected, and it also makes corruption more difficult as
| it's far easier to bribe a few members of the party top
| brass than it is to bribe 50% + 1 of a parliament. Of
| course informal alliances will form between politicians
| but that's fine as long as it happens transparently and
| within the public institutions which are accountable to
| all, this is very different to a party which is only
| accountable to its members.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We could abolish parties altogether and instead elect
| all our representatives directly as independents
|
| No, we couldn't. I mean, we could eliminate formal
| parties, but making factionalism less transparent doesn't
| eliminate it, it just makes it harder for voters to know
| what they are getting.
|
| There's plenty of research about both better
| proportionality of results and _more_ supported parties
| improves most measures of health of democracies,
| including popular satisfaction with government.
|
| > There's no "us versus them" in this scenario, just
| "us".
|
| Just because the labels associated with "us" and "them"
| don't appear on formal organizations or besides names on
| the ballot doesn't mean they don't exist. (You can see
| that _within_ parties now--the harsh divisions between
| the progressive and neoliberal wings of the Democratic
| Party don 't need separate formal parties, or even
| entities of any kind, to exist; further, the well-defined
| factions that became the original US parties existed and
| were widely recognized before formal parties did. Parties
| are a product, not the source, of factionalism.)
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| We'd be bringing it into the public sphere where it can
| be regulated better at least, that's already an enormous
| improvement. I just think it's insanity to let
| essentially private and unaccountable organisations have
| this much power over ordinary people's lives. Laws should
| be made as part of an authentically democratic process
| that at least tries to involve the whole socio-economic
| makeup of the country, not as a result of private
| intrigues in the party's membership and leadership which
| represents a much smaller fraction of the population and
| obfuscates everything to the point that the vast majority
| of us won't hear about what _actually_ happened until
| years after the fact when memoirs are published. Would
| there not be far more democracy if it were exercised
| directly rather than through the distorting lens of a
| party?
|
| I'll be honest, I've followed politics in my country
| since the age I could vote and I'm struggling to think of
| anything positive other than perhaps improved
| decisiveness in a crisis that parties bring to the table
| that couldn't be achieved more transparently and
| efficiently in a non-partisan system. What they do bring
| to the table is an enormous attack surface for egotism,
| corruption, and intrigue.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We'd be bringing it into the public sphere where it can
| be regulated better at least, that's already an enormous
| improvement
|
| In the US, political parties are in the public sphere and
| extensively regulated, unlike private entities that are
| _not_ political parties but engage in political
| campaigning independent of formal parties and individual
| candidates.
|
| Abolishing formal parties in the US would increase, not
| limit, the role of unaccountable entities driving
| political factionalism.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I'm not American, but wasn't the US government itself a
| non-partisan entity prior to and in the period
| immediately after independence? Either way, I get that
| they're regulated in theory as part of the public sphere
| but that's not the point I'm getting at, the point I'm
| getting at that in practice these parties often behave as
| vehicles for private (and often fairly elitist) interests
| and as a result I think their useful functions should be
| carried out more directly by democratic parliaments where
| they can be scrutinised more transparently.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > but wasn't the US government itself a non-partisan
| entity prior to and in the period immediately after
| independence?
|
| Yes, the intense factions that sprang up _without_
| parties immediately after adoption of the Constitution
| formed the nucleus around which the first parties formed.
| Parties are a symptom, not the source.
|
| > the point I'm getting at that in practice these parties
| often behave as vehicles for private (and often fairly
| elitist) interests
|
| Yes, elite factions do that whether they are formalized
| as parties or not.
|
| Banning formalized parties has no effect on that.
|
| > I think their useful functions should be carried out
| more directly by democratic parliaments
|
| There is no possible configuration of laws which would
| produce that effect.
| throaway46546 wrote:
| How would you prevent someone from creating a Democratic
| Non-party and Republican Non-party that endorse "non
| partisan" candidates? Would you ban the endorsements of
| candidates outright? That would seem to cause it's own
| issues.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| You probably would have to ban entities like
| corporations, partnerships, and non-profits from
| endorsing a candidate. It would essentially extend and
| make permanent the concept of Purdah to those entities.
| Purdah is the state of affairs during the pre-election
| period in the UK where entities like local governments
| and the Civil Service can't say anything that might
| prejudice the outcome of an election, though I can't
| argue that it wouldn't be a very draconian policy and
| doing something completely different to the original
| intention of the concept.
|
| I don't think having very strict rules about the
| relationships between corporations/non-profits and
| politicians is necessarily a bad thing in itself, in fact
| many would see it as a good thing that further protects
| democracy from manipulation by private interests.
| However, I do see the other side of the argument in that
| it would probably open its own can of worms especially in
| areas like freedom of speech. The whole idea does start
| to unravel if your conception of free speech applies to
| entities like corporations as well as individuals.
| Unsurprisingly I lean towards the idea that it doesn't,
| but I can also see some very valid arguments for the
| opposite as well.
|
| It could well be a moot point however, I'm not sure how
| well these "not-parties" would do once society had got
| used to a few elections without parties and experienced
| the relief that would come from making politics much less
| adversarial (I suspect arguments between friends and
| family would be less common without the tribal labels
| backed by billions of dollars of "enrangement is
| engagement" for example). We can probably get some idea
| by looking at extant "not-party" political entities like
| charities, NGOs, and lobby groups to see how effectively
| they influence elections today.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You probably would have to ban entities like
| corporations, partnerships, and non-profits from
| endorsing a candidate.
|
| This makes it practically impossible in the US; so long
| as not coordinated with a formal party or candidate
| committee, it has been ruled a violation of the First
| Amendment to even limit expenditures on promotion of a
| candidate by private entities; to outright _ban_ such
| actions would be a more flagrant violation.
|
| > I don't think having very strict rules about the
| relationships between corporations/non-profits and
| politicians is necessarily a bad thing in itself, in fact
| many would see it as a good thing that further protects
| democracy from manipulation by private interests
|
| You cannot "protect democracy from manipulation by
| private interests"; the concept is incoherent. Democracy
| is the aggregate of private interests determining the
| public interest.
|
| > It could well be a moot point however, I'm not sure how
| well these "not-parties" would do once society had got
| used to a few elections without parties and experienced
| the relief that would come from making politics much less
| adversarial
|
| We've had the absence of formal parties, politics was
| violently adversarial and formal parties emerged from the
| adversarial factions.
|
| You cannot alter human nature by abolishing formal
| parties, which are, again, a _symptom_ not the _cause_ of
| political factionalism.
| aww_dang wrote:
| I agree the parallels are clear. Both narratives rely on fear
| and mass hysteria. Putting aside the hot potato of 9/11, we can
| hopefully discuss the issue of Iraqi WMDs in a less
| inflammatory way.
|
| The mainstream presses never had a reckoning for their role in
| issuing false rationales for the war in Iraq. Those who
| believed the propaganda shouted down dissent as "conspiracy
| nuttery" and anti-Americanism. After the fact, many of those I
| know simply switched their positions. They denied they ever
| unfairly dismissed concerns or experts (Hans Blix) which ran
| counter to prevailing propaganda.
|
| Which brings us back to the present rationales for expanded
| state power, where dissent is dismissed as conspiracy nuttery
| and anti-science. Once again, the incentives are ignored.
| bedhead wrote:
| One of the more interesting parallels I see is how injecting
| morality into the matter poisoned everything and ensured
| terrible policy decisions. How many people and politicians
| got effectively bullied into going along with the idiotic
| Iraq war because people on the right accused them of not
| caring about 9/11 victims?
|
| 9/11 victims, granny-killer, same side of a different coin.
|
| Hysteria, paranoia, morality, a plan to keep people "safe" -
| beware of this dangerous pattern.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| Above all if everyone is acting in good faith, there should
| be no taboos about inquiring about ulterior motives.
| Instead of ridiculing or censoring dissent, coherent and
| consistent explanations should be provided. If the
| rationales for hysteria and emergency measures cannot
| withstand an open debate, that should be illustrative.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Part of the problem in the current situation is that there is
| a ton of anti-science conspiracy nuttery. If you are going to
| dissent, you need to do so in a way that doesn't get pattern-
| matched with people who are clearly being irrational.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Was it irrational to call critics of the post 9/11 world
| anti-American?
| wesleywt wrote:
| What about 650000 American dead makes you cynical about COVID?
| abstractbarista wrote:
| It just doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.
| [deleted]
| ubermonkey wrote:
| >The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are
| eerie.
|
| Are they?
|
| Complaints about post-9/11 "security" have mostly been about
| the ineffectiveness of steps that are clearly security theater,
| or the boondoggles of things like the x-ray scanners. Input
| from security experts was widely ignored in favor of, well,
| dumb ideas.
|
| The COVID remediation steps we've been asked to take -- masks
| in public, social distancing, taking the vaccine once it's
| available -- are exactly what epidemiologists would've said
| were the right steps if asked about a hypothetical pandemic 25,
| 50, 75, or 100 years ago. They're directly in line with expert
| advice, and provably effective.
| [deleted]
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The only parallels are between COVID conspiracy theorists and
| 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Nearly all federal COVID guidance
| from the CDC has been well-reasoned and carefully balances
| public health goals with the reality of life in America. State
| and local measures have been questionable, but all that says is
| that state and local governments are not really up to the task
| and should have universally deferred to the CDC.
| titzer wrote:
| > The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are
| eerie.
|
| I don't see the same parallels. After 9/11 the US was
| _extraordinarily_ united and committed to vengeance. Thousands
| joined the military. After COVID we 're more divided than ever
| and people are not even willing put a piece of cloth on their
| faces. Widespread denial and resistance to anything
| inconveniencing them. Whereas after 9/11 people were willing to
| put up with 3+ hour wait times and tons of other restrictions.
| adolph wrote:
| > After 9/11 the US was extraordinarily united and committed
| to vengeance. Thousands joined the military. After COVID
| we're more divided than ever and people are not even willing
| put a piece of cloth on their faces.
|
| The govt reaction is similar. The populace has learned new
| lessons since 9/11.
| bedhead wrote:
| Mass loss of life. Novel way in which people died. People
| dying randomly (hard to avoid). General hysteria. Paranoia
| over a minority group. Moral outrage against anyone not
| falling inline politically. Overreaching government plans to
| keep people safe. Petty symbolism (freedom fries/masks) to
| sort the moral from the immoral.
|
| Should I go on?
| [deleted]
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| We killed 100x more people in Iraq with no evidence that
| their leadership was culpable.
| titzer wrote:
| You think masks are petty symbolism? I think that kind of
| trolling just raises the temperature here, which I'd like
| to avoid, so no, please, do not go on.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Are you still not aware that there are serious people who
| believe that masks are basically irrelevant in a
| respiratory pandemic? Accusing others of trolling on this
| issue is not helpful. It was the consensus in Western
| medicine for 100 years. This consensus was forged after
| mask mandates were shown to be ineffective for Spanish
| Flu.
|
| Here's what a Harvard epidemiologist has to say about the
| Bangladesh study:
|
| "The Bangladesh mask study does not show a statistically
| significant difference in the efficacy of cloth masks vs
| surgical masks. Based on the confidence intervals, both
| could be around 0% or both could be around 20%."
|
| https://twitter.com/MartinKulldorff/status/14355739027894
| 640...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I think I know a ton of Covid-cautious people who "wear a
| mask" to restaurants by putting one on as they walk
| through the door and taking it off as they sit at their
| table. There are a lot of contexts where masks directly
| affect transmission, but it seems clear that they're also
| serving a symbolic role beyond their practical utility.
| throwaway_dcnt wrote:
| Do we think security theater is symbolism? It has had
| some positives over the years just as masks have a huge
| positive health impact during COVID but on both sides of
| the issue, people treat it as a signal as well, no?
| chitowneats wrote:
| Someone arguing in favor of security theater on HN.
| Brave.
| rkk3 wrote:
| What else do you call the performance of wearing your
| mask talking to the busboy and then taking it off after
| you are seated-inside a full restaurant.
|
| Other performative examples would include permanent
| enclosed "outside" buildings complete with heating, AC
| and no airflow.
| tylersmith wrote:
| It's not trolling just because you disagree with it.
| titzer wrote:
| > In internet slang, a troll is a person who posts
| inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-
| topic messages in an online community (such as social
| media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.), a newsgroup,
| forum, chat room, or blog), with the intent of provoking
| readers into displaying emotional responses, or
| manipulating others' perception.
|
| From Wikipedia. Inflammatory, digressive, and off-topic =
| trolling.
| bedhead wrote:
| Endless studies and real-world data showing no efficacy
| and half the world doesn't care. A new one every week,
| nobody cares, they're stuck in their religion.
|
| Last week:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8395971/
|
| Conclusions: There was no reduction in per-population
| daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed, or ventilator
| occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to
| the implementation of a mask-wearing mandate.
|
| Also last week: large Bangladesh study showing cloth does
| nothing, surgical 11% reduction but only among people
| over 50 and it still was neither statistically
| significant nor could be attributable to masks vs other
| factors.
|
| Half the country doesn't care, they're forever stuck in
| their COVID jingoism, proud to tell people how righteous
| they are. So, enjoy those Freedom Fries, I mean masks!! I
| mean look at your response, like, "Oh no don't you dare
| say that 'there is no god' around here!!" It's just a
| faith-based issue at this point.
| thrownaway810 wrote:
| The study you have linked does not support the conclusion
| you've drawn from it. I would recommend reading the
| "Discussion" sections, where the authors discuss other
| studies in other areas of the world that contradict
| theirs, and the impact of various social and density
| factors on their specific study.
| shkkmo wrote:
| That study seems to have an obvious and unacknowledged
| flaw: they did not control for the growing prevalence of
| the delta variant this summer even though the time frame
| of the study exactly coincides with the spread of delta
| within the united states.
|
| These sorts of analyses are extremely hard to control all
| confounds for.
| nradov wrote:
| Putting on cloth masks doesn't produce a statistically
| significant decrease in symptomatic infection rates.
|
| https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-
| mask...
| shkkmo wrote:
| Wow, what a way to misrepresent that study.
|
| The reduction in infection rates wasn't large enough to
| qualify as statistically significant. That just means that
| the reduction that they saw from cloth masks could have
| been due to chance.
|
| Edit: Since the size of the cloth mask group is half the
| size of the surgical masl group, the effect in the cloth
| mask group would have to be comperatively larger than the
| effect on the surgical masl group to qualify as
| significant.
|
| Somewhow you take that as evidence cloth masks don't work?
| otikik wrote:
| The link you provided says the opposite of what you just
| said in the _title_.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Good thing better masks are available then.
|
| If anything, this argues that we weren't strict _enough_ on
| masks. Require not just wearing one, but a good one.
| thrownaway810 wrote:
| > This aligns with lab tests showing that surgical masks
| have better filtration than cloth masks. However, cloth
| masks did reduce the overall likelihood of experiencing
| symptoms of respiratory illness during the study period.
|
| What is it that you think you read in this article? What
| you have said is not supported in any way by the link you
| have provided.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| > Although there were also fewer COVID-19 cases in
| villages with cloth masks as compared to control
| villages, the difference was not statistically
| significant.
|
| This means you can't draw conclusions from this finding
| apart from that any difference there actually is is
| really small.
| mike00632 wrote:
| You can't draw conclusions from that study... yet that is
| exactly what you did in declaring masks to be
| ineffective.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| What are you referring to? The top comment is not mine
| and also does not make that declaration, it correctly
| states that the difference is statistically
| insignificant.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Most people in 2021 would agree that the overzealous response
| to 9/11 caused untold suffering and misery. At the time
| though, either you were with us or against us. Good or evil.
|
| Are you sure that's the parallel you want to be drawing here?
| Might you have a different opinion about this event in, oh,
| say, a decade or two? By then of course the damage will have
| been done.
| titzer wrote:
| They are pretty different things, at pretty different
| times. We could make bad analogies all day long and end up
| at some very weird places. Like imagine that COVID was
| invisible Arab terrorists armed with a gas who killed
| 600,000+ Americans. I think the response and fear level
| would be very different. But it's a silly analogy and a
| real digression from thinking about 9/11 in its own
| context.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Like covid, the actions of invisible terrorists would be
| largely out of our control. It's unfortunate so many of
| us are unwilling to accept that.
| titzer wrote:
| You mean, invisible Arab terrorists that are disarmed
| absurdly well by a vaccine. You see, this is _exactly_
| why it 's a terrible analogy, because people will just
| twist it to suit their pre-conceived notions about the
| current divisive topic, bludgeon those they disagree
| with, and jump right back into the same damn arguments.
|
| I thought we were reflecting on 9/11. COVID is such a bad
| analogy. _FUCK_ , it's such a bad analogy.
| dustintrex wrote:
| The intersection of COVID and air travel is particularly bad.
|
| https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/14/most-covid-19-t...
| ridaj wrote:
| Except many, many more deaths in the case of Covid, and we
| don't have, thankfully, a federal Covid Corps to enforce any of
| the related policies...
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Many deaths in a certain age group above 65 y.o.. Most age
| groups had very few deaths.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Isn't the same true of 9/11? The FAA oversees 45,000
| flights per year and very rarely does anyone die.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Too late to edit, but that should be 45,000 per DAY
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| In your opinion, how important are the lives of people aged
| 65 and older?
|
| Also, for death rates being higher in the elderly... isn't
| that going to be true for most diseases? Pointing this out
| seems tautological to me.
|
| And what does "very few" actually mean here?
|
| Is death the only negative outcome of COVID-19?
| sleavey wrote:
| > In your opinion, how important are the lives of people
| aged 65 and older?
|
| I think you intended that as a rhetorical question but I
| want to point out that in the UK the NHS has calculated
| the "worth" of a single quality-adjusted life year. If a
| treatment gives less quality-adjusted extra life years
| than it costs, it isn't administered. In 2014 it was
| PS20-60k [1]. This shows the NHS definitely does consider
| older peoples' lives worth less than younger peoples', on
| average.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-28983924
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| Understood, though I'd point out that other insurance
| schemes will have similar sorts of calculations (either
| directly or indirectly in the form of premiums/annual
| limits in the US), so the specificity of the NHS isn't
| particularly helpful here, as it's one model among many.
|
| Also, based on my casual skimming of this article:
| https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg6/chapter/assessing-
| cost-..., this particular model evaluates other factors
| beyond age (such as health history) and is in the context
| of providing specific treatments for specific conditions
| rather than broader actions for disease prevention.
|
| But yes, my question was rhetorical, in the sense that
| I've read far too much casual acceptance of the deaths of
| older people on HN, as if this ~15% of the population [in
| the US at least] are freely expendable.
| sleavey wrote:
| > I've read far too much casual acceptance of the deaths
| of older people on HN, as if this ~15% of the population
| [in the US at least] are freely expendable.
|
| I don't think most people on HN implying such things mean
| to say old people are freely expendable, but rather that
| they should not be saved at _all cost_. Our non-
| pharmaceutical interventions have a cost associated with
| them too, so we have to strike a balance that's
| acceptable. The debate to me is ultimately over where the
| line is. It's not helped that the true costs of lockdowns
| etc. (or indeed the true cost of not locking down) are
| not actually all that clear. One consequence is that
| debates over policies such as these have happened without
| reliable figures on both sides, and have therefore
| descended into unconstructive emotional arguments.
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| I agree, most people aren't saying that (my wording was
| "too much"). I also suspect that the majority of people
| on all sides are not arguing whether or not to save lives
| at "all cost" --- this seems to be a partisan distortion
| of the actual debate that is occurring among serious
| people (much like the similarly egregious "granny killer"
| reference elsewhere in these comments).
|
| There are real arguments and a real, valid debate here on
| the limits of a government's influence upon its citizens,
| while also fulfilling its tacit obligation to maintain a
| reasonably stable society in a chaotic world, and in a
| form where its citizens are free to assemble other
| organizations with their own forms of governance and
| capacity to encourage actions among their own members.
| But the debate seems to be projected onto a shape
| increasing in magnitude, but decreasing in dimension,
| flatting nuanced arguments into more extreme, tangential
| versions of themselves. People end up speaking different
| languages, where all words contain other tacit
| assumptions which are unstated but differ greatly
| depending on the speaker/listener.
|
| It's hard to find a good discussion nowadays.
| sleavey wrote:
| Well said. As for a good place to discuss this stuff, my
| view is that, to misappropriate the Churchill quote, HN
| is the worst place I've found for debating COVID matters
| except for all the other places I've found. At least most
| people here, being predominantly from scientific and
| engineering backgrounds, are capable of and willing to
| remove emotion from debate and assess the biases inherent
| in arguments on both sides.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I'm tired of people pretending that everyone on the
| planet is expendable except Americans.
|
| There are elderly people dying in other countries and
| perfectly healthy Americans are lining up for the
| vaccines and acting righteous about saving granny when
| the reality is they're doing it in their own self-
| interest.
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| On a reread, I see that my comment is ambiguous and could
| have suggested that I believe Americans were more worth
| protecting. Sorry for that, I didn't intend that reading.
| >15% of the US population is >=6 age 65. I'm more
| familiar with US numbers so I used that.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| If people truly cared about the elderly, they would be
| forgoing the vaccine so that elderly people in other
| countries could have their dose.
|
| No one cares one bit about anyone, except for the people
| that are close to them.
|
| Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to gas light you
| for their own self interest.
| nradov wrote:
| You can find CDC estimates of deaths by age group here.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
| updates/burd...
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Here's a much more clear data set.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-
| deaths-...
|
| To put this into perspective... 36,000 people died of car
| accidents in 2019.
|
| In the under 50 group around 20,000 people died of Covid.
|
| The under 50 age group makes up around 80% of the
| population.
|
| Interpret that however you want.
| bedhead wrote:
| You're wasting your time.
|
| COVID deaths could be entirely amongst 97 year old obese
| smokers with stage 4 cancer and half the country would
| still give the same obtuse responses, call you granny-
| killer, tell you you're selfish for not wanting to wear a
| mask, say "pandemic" like it's a mic drop, etc etc etc.
| You'll be stuck in a COVID version of the "This amp goes to
| 11" conversation.
|
| It turns out that shocking people with a million volts of
| raw terror does in fact blow a fuse in many people's brains
| (go figure) causing them to lose all cognitive abilities.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| I disagree with you, even in your hypothetical situation.
| I'd gladly wear a mask to protect 97-year-old obese
| smokers, if they were a vulnerable group. I feel like you
| invented this group to distance the vulnerable population
| from "us", but it just makes it sound like you have no
| empathy for other humans.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| There are people with severe immune deficiencies that any
| disease they catch could kill them.
|
| Why aren't you wearing a full body haz mat suit to
| protect them?
|
| Do you think people with immune deficiencies lives are
| worth less and its okay to kill them?
|
| Where do you draw the line where it's okay to kill some
| people with your bodily diseases but not others?
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| I don't claim to have all the answers, but I think
| wearing a mask is a reasonable accommodation and barely
| an inconvenience. Same goes for FDA-approved vaccines.
|
| Reductio ad absurdum doesn't always work in the real
| world, so your hazmat scenario just sounds silly.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| In the 18-39 age group, COVID-19 has caused 4x as many US
| deaths as deaths in all age groups on 9/11.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Yet not as many as car accidents in 2019.
|
| What is sensational comparison you present.
| JoshTko wrote:
| 4.5 million deaths from Covid so far.
| switch007 wrote:
| From Covid or with covid (edit: I'm merely asking which
| stat you're citing. Source?)? Ie the disease killed them or
| they tested positive while dying from something else?
| vmception wrote:
| the interesting thing I've found about _those_ circles is
| that the followup is never discussed. they just stick
| with the earlier information and make it the hill they
| want to die on.
|
| over the past 15 months, many organizations (including
| the CDC) municipalities (including within the US in
| democrat and republican areas) and countries have
| revisited old deaths and current death recording
| practices, in direct response to this observation and
| criticism
|
| most times they end up finding more COVID deaths,
| different ones in greater quantity than the incorrectly
| recorded ones that shouldn't have been counted. sometimes
| there is a slight temporary downward death count
| adjustment. and more importantly, the aggregate stats
| everywhere already account for this. when news reports
| X-hundred thousand death milestone, its already factored
| in the corrected numbers.
|
| what seems _most_ important to me is that all ailments,
| especially respiratory ones, have the same recording and
| accounting discrepancies. if the aforementioned " _those
| circles_ " were also the " _just the flu_ " circles, then
| the gravity of COVID relative to the flu (or anything
| else) would still be seen from the original flawed
| recording standard, because all prior year's flu numbers
| are polluted the same way. makes it hard to view those
| circles as a better alternative to listen to, when the
| flaws of the established authorities still point to an
| aggregate good enough signal.
| ridaj wrote:
| There have been clear excess deaths (mortality rate
| increases) from all causes combined during waves. Most
| evaluations of excess deaths that I've seen conclude that
| Covid deaths are undercounted not over counted.
| switch007 wrote:
| They didn't cite excess deaths however. Hence my question
|
| Again, you say "covid deaths". That is not precise.
| ridaj wrote:
| Do we say "death from car accidents" or "death with car
| accident"? Do we discount terminal cancer patients,
| diabetics and asthmatics from car accident stats because
| they had a preexisting condition? In the case of covid as
| with car accidents, it's a distinction without a
| difference. Yes people are more predisposed to die from
| covid because of them, but analyses of all-causes excess
| mortality do not support the hypothesis that there is a
| large difference between deaths with covid and deaths
| from covid.
|
| EDIT: except when there isn't enough testing, which
| underreported deaths with covid towards the beginning of
| the pandemic.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| We count flu deaths as 'with flu' instead of 'from flu',
| so counting covid this way keeps it as close to apples-
| to-apples as possible.
| bserge wrote:
| Methodologies vary, but comparing deaths to any of the
| previous years, it is clear that they've increased. And
| the only major change was the new virus.
|
| But of course, never let a good chance go to waste. We'll
| see an increase in restrictions because of Covid, they're
| not going away anytime soon.
| 988747 wrote:
| The major change, at least in my country, is that
| healthcare is so focused on COVID that they are
| neglecting patients with other diseases. So the excess
| deaths are mostly effect of that.
| ziml77 wrote:
| There is limited capacity to provide care for people. If
| people are without COVID dying because COVID cases are
| taking up that capacity, then COVID is a factor in those
| deaths as well.
|
| One of the earliest fears about the spread of COVID was
| exactly this issue: too many cases would overwhelm the
| healthcare system and cause deaths to rise even more.
| Even if we couldn't stop the spread of the virus, one of
| the goals was to slow it down to keep the number of
| simultaneous cases to a minimum.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| should they leave the covid patients in the hallways?
| whats the alternative? people dying from overloaded
| hospitals has always been the concern, ever since
| "flatten the curve"
| switch007 wrote:
| Then they can cite an excess deaths stat then.
| vmception wrote:
| your point here seems to be that people aren't doing that
|
| who is "they" in your opinion, because plenty of people
| and organizations do cite excess death stats
|
| are you really so far removed that you need us to provide
| a citation on excess deaths, this far into things? this
| reminds me of conversations in May 2020, because this
| entire conversation was procedurally generated in May
| 2020. Have you considered the possibility that all your
| apps marginalized you in this niche where no other
| information is shown to you everyday for the past year?
| refurb wrote:
| We had almost zero airport security in the US until the 60's. And
| that never went away, so that's your answer.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Pay the TSA Pre shakedown fee and you don't need to take your
| shoes off.
|
| The problem is we created a monetary incentive to keep the
| current policy in place.
| Minor49er wrote:
| 20 years after 9/11, the official story still doesn't add up
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| Wow... A single HN reader gets it ;P
| monkeywork wrote:
| Topics like this is why I'm against domestic vaccine passports
| like the Canadian provinces are suggesting we use. Temporary
| measures that become perm and dramatically change our way of
| lives - especially with poor risk / reward evaluation.
| focusgroup0 wrote:
| The TSA was never about Security. It's about lucrative gov't
| contracts, conditioning people to accept further invasions of
| privacy, and a jobs program for unemployable dregs of society.
|
| The spamdemic was never about Public Health,
| cm2187 wrote:
| At Geneva airport they have a separate line with what looks like
| some new machines that basically require nothing, you just drop
| your bag full of laptops, tablets and liquids and you go through
| the metal detector. Can't wait for it to generalise.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| TSA jobs cant go away now that they exist. They probably never
| will. It will look bad for whatever president that does it
| because they will eliminate jobs and "national security" checks.
|
| Everyone knows its a joke but we will keep doing it.
| jedberg wrote:
| They could easily phase it out. They already have. There is
| already a rule that an airport can hire a private security
| company as long as it's approved by the TSA. They could make a
| small rule change that allows the private security to make
| their own rules, or just make some of the rules optional, like
| shoes off.
|
| So we'd still have TSA agents in some places, but for example
| SFO already opts out of TSA agents. If they could opt out of
| the shoes off rule they probably would. At that point you've
| effectively eliminated the TSA without making a big deal about
| it.
| noetic_techy wrote:
| I'll take it a step further. We need a total paradigm redesign of
| airports.
|
| Imagine and airport designed to the point where you can literally
| drive up (or be dropped by an autonomous vehicle) 10 minutes
| before your flight, Throw your luggage onto a belt where a robot
| auto tags it based on your a facial recognition algorithm, and
| walk through an unobtrusive security point that's totally AI
| driven, and walk direct to your plane ready to go. As someone who
| travels a lot, I say forget shoes, this is the ultimate dream.
| The "arrive 2 hours before your flight" nonsense should be
| automated into oblivion on both ends. I think we just accept this
| paradigm of air travel now and our airports have become these
| bohemoths of capture to sell you food, beverage and overpriced
| trinkets with abhorent wait times for the actual flight
| logistics. Why cant I just be dropped off directly at my gate and
| bumble on in less then 5 minutes!
| fma wrote:
| This would really only apply for fights where I'm checking in
| luggage...international flights, for example.
|
| I wouldn't mind a feature where I can drop off my luggage
| somewhere near my house the day before my flight and it gets
| tagged, bulked transferred and inspected at the airport.
|
| This would allow me to straight to the gate and not need to
| check in large luggage or fumble with luggage while rushing for
| a flight.
|
| This also forces me to pack early and now the night of the
| flight and be sleep deprived.
| O5vYtytb wrote:
| No thanks. Airlines seem to lose enough baggage already, I
| wouldn't trust them with another major logistics project.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'm half-surprised we don't already have this. The airlines
| already use some sort of uber-like self-employed contractors
| to deliver lost luggage. They could offer the same service in
| the other direction.
| lolsal wrote:
| I believe this is pretty common in Japan. I did something
| like this with my luggage when using the trains from city
| to city.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| This already exists in some cities. Though I would love this
| to be available in all major cities myself. Here in Vienna
| for example we have the CAT (City Airport Train) [0]
|
| Its an express train taking you from a city center railway
| station directly to the airport in about 15 minutes and also
| allows you to check in and drop off your luggage up to 24h
| before departure.
|
| It's criticized by locals as too expensive compared to the
| S-Bahn serving the same connection (just slower/with more
| stops) but especially for visitors it of course gives you the
| huge benefit of not having to deal with any luggage on the
| last day when you already had to check out of your hotel.
|
| [0] https://www.cityairporttrain.com/en/news/unique-in-
| europe-th...
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| This reminds me of "portal travel." It's a half-joke, based on
| the vision of walking through a portal and showing up at your
| destination. Of course that's impossible, but...
|
| Imagine a portal showing up outside your house, maybe on the
| back of a truck. It's got all the theater: the wavy green
| lights, smoke, the whole deal. You wave good bye to your
| family, walk in, and then you get chloroformed and pass out.
| Your body is loaded into a standardized life support container
| and driven to the airport. Then, you get revived 6 hours later
| at your hotel so you can take a shower.
|
| Ok, so there are some details to work out but the point is that
| the typical air travel experience is so terrible it would be
| better to be unconscious for most of it. Portal travel!
| yarone wrote:
| Ha, thanks for this.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| What bugs me is how every airport is a completely custom
| design.
|
| Somehow, no two airports are ever alike, and I have a hard time
| understanding how that happened. There's no clones at all.
|
| Like, I understand they each have their own geographical
| constraints, but so does a McDonalds or a Walmart, and somehow
| I can walk into any of those on the planet without feeling too
| confused.
|
| Every airport is a multi-billion dollar project designed anew
| from the ground up. Even when it's a greenfield build. Dunno
| why they can't just pick an existing airport design and say
| "build that".
|
| Even roller-coasters will have their clones at different parks
| (authorized or unauthorized).
| Thrymr wrote:
| > Dunno why they can't just pick an existing airport design
| and say "build that".
|
| Presumably because all airports suck, and every designer
| thinks they could do better?
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| This was exactly my experience in Singapore. I loved every min
| of my 10 mins in the airport.
| baybal2 wrote:
| It just needs to be abandoned. No point talking about it more.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I cant imagine how large scale of an airport would be required
| to do all that for everyone on the plane in 10 mins before the
| flight.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I mean you pretty much can do this depending on the airport. I
| generally show up half an hour before boarding. If it's a weird
| time or an airport that never has a security line it'll be 10.
| I don't check bags and use my phone ticket so other than an
| abnormally long security line there's no reason to show up more
| than half an hour early.
| Borrible wrote:
| Well, yes, inertia and symbolic action.
|
| But why don't you have to take them off before entering a high
| speed train?
|
| https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/SP0520-Terrorist-Attacks-...
| alliao wrote:
| belt off in London, shoes off in NY. If you're an unfit middle
| aged male flying between London and New York will make you
| consider flying private sooner rather than later. That's my
| hypothesis anyway.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I thought shoes were due to Richard Reed, not 9/11?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| https://www.fbi.gov/history/artifact-of-the-month/december-2...
|
| Man I had no idea this even happened, I either forgot or never
| heard of it cause it seems to have been an open and shut event.
| willcipriano wrote:
| "19 years and 10 months after the shoe bomber: Will we ever
| stop taking our shoes off at airports?" didn't fly with the
| editor.
| ekianjo wrote:
| How about water bottles?
| ldehaan wrote:
| Shoes off. Belt off Backpack ready for search Full body genital
| scan Mask scanner with RFID chip reader Vaccine passport
| Passport/drivers license or state ID Credit or bank card only
| Social media must be free of x/y posts
|
| -Or-
|
| Pay to skip the line
| satya71 wrote:
| I already don't. Turns out the solution is to give up some
| privacy and pay some money.
| syops wrote:
| This is one reason why it will be hard to get rid of the silly
| requirement to take shoes off. DHS has a financial interest in
| keeping the theater going.
| version_five wrote:
| Not just financial interest, but also getting a free pass to
| make people do what authorities want without having to
| convince them, and to crack down on anyone they don't like
| for any reason.
|
| Rules like this that don't really have a point and are
| applied unevenly (like drug laws, many traffic laws, public
| intoxication...) are just a lazy way to make sure authorities
| can make anyone or any group they want "fall in line" while
| not actually preventing favored individuals or groups from
| doing what they want. It's the most unfair and unequal kind
| of regulation, and in general people cant6get enough of it,
| precisely because they know it will be used mostly against
| groups they don't like, but they dont have to explicitly
| identify those groups or otherwise acknowledge their
| prejudice.
| Ekaros wrote:
| That is what I find so strange, isn't it likely that this
| privileged group could be infiltrated?
| bserge wrote:
| Very likely, if anyone cares enough.
| psoots wrote:
| > It's costly to have government employees because you have to
| pay benefits and they are unionized.
|
| Sometimes people say the quiet parts out loud.
| 88 wrote:
| I thought the removal of shoes was a response to the Shoe Bomber
| plot, not 9/11?
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid
| dpeck wrote:
| It was shortly afterwards so falls in the same mental "bucket"
| for all practical purposes.
| leecarraher wrote:
| Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in
| airports which caught Richard Reid, was a direct response to
| 9/11 . Either Way, it is still mainly security theater to make
| passengers less apprehensive about taking what is still the
| safest mode of travel per passenger mile( there might be other
| metrics, but this is the only one I've read recently).
| dawnerd wrote:
| It's so hard to prove either way if TSA/etc are effective. We
| can count how many people they stop but there's no way of
| knowing how many were just scared away.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in
| airports which caught the Richard Reid
|
| Eh? But he wasn't caught due to airport security. He got onto
| the plane and tried to set off the bomb during the flight.
|
| He _would_ have been caught if someone had looked at his
| shoes.
| mywittyname wrote:
| But if he knew they were checking shoes at airport
| security, then he probably would have put it somewhere
| else.
| dylan604 wrote:
| What like his underwear? And now we get to go through
| full body scanners without our shoes. You're much more
| likely to be able sneak a firearm through than an
| explosive device now.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Where?
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Where?
|
| Are you familiar with any recent bomber story at all? All
| he needed was some matches and a small amount of
| plastique.
|
| Someone put an incendiary in his underwear. There are
| tons of possibilities. If you can't name 3 ways other
| than shoes and underwear, you might be in the group that
| thinks the TSA is fine.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| They scan your body for bulky objects under clothing and
| X-ray luggage. Shoes are the only other location to hide
| an explosive device.
| throaway46546 wrote:
| How do they get cellphones into prison?
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Mostly guards smuggling them in
| throaway46546 wrote:
| Yes, but I think you get where I am coming from.
| dustintrex wrote:
| Let's all be grateful this dude didn't try to pull his
| underwear bomb stunt on an airplane.
|
| http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/09/30/saudi.arabi
| a.a...
| frickinLasers wrote:
| Do you mean like this other guy did?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Well isn't that the reason for it? Deny an avenue of
| attack so they to use another less effective option?
|
| But anyway - the point was 'general escalation of
| security in airports which caught the Richard Reid' is a
| provably false statement.
| conductr wrote:
| > mainly security theater
|
| I have often noticed policies are different at each airport.
| Combined with the shoe/belt/imaging policies, I believe it's
| meant to be a form of confusion. As in, any given security
| policy/process can be studied for weaknesses. When the
| policies are differing/changing there is a component of
| surprise the attacker has to account for that can be
| difficult to game. However, this is all in my head as I try
| to understand my observations. Hoping it's all being done
| intentionally, when chances are it's just local level
| enforcement picking and choosing what ever they want to
| enforce any given day depending on who is in charge on that
| shift.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Ever since the pandemic I seem to have been shadow banned
| from PreCheck, and reading their FAQ the TSA is quite clear
| they deliberately randomize security, even to the point
| that getting a PreCheck on the boarding pass isn't
| guaranteed.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| It wasn't related to the Shoe Bomber plot, there was planning
| around something larger scale.
|
| To be honest I don't feel comfortable even linking to this
| stuff but it's Wikipedia.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojinka_plot
| h2odragon wrote:
| > I don't feel comfortable even linking to this stuff
|
| Why not? "eww this is propaganda" or "talking about terrorist
| makes me one?"
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > Why not? "eww this is propaganda" or "talking about
| terrorist makes me one?"'
|
| The actual answer is that the page, due to it's dynamic
| nature, at times consisted of specific details that were
| probably not relevant to the overall subject.
|
| It's not unreasonable in this day and age to be concerned
| about what you are linking to. In this case it's Wikipedia,
| so, "sue me".
| h2odragon wrote:
| thank you for the response, i was actually asking for
| information; apologies if the tone sounded sarcastic.
|
| This detail seems relevant:
|
| > Yousef smuggled the nitroglycerin on board by putting
| it inside a small container, reputedly containing contact
| lens cleaning solution.
|
| if that's the basis of "no liquids on planes" rules then
| its horseshit. make people shake the bottle at the
| security checkin.
|
| Almost all the security theater relies on things being to
| scary for people to think about. Nitroglycerin when
| liquid is not yer friend. Ricin was never the boogeyman
| the media made it out to be. And on and on for years now.
| [deleted]
| jsight wrote:
| It is also possible to link to a specific version: https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bojinka_plot&oldi...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Not everyone is comfortable talking about attempted murder.
| (Not everyone is comfortable around dogs, either.)
| strogonoff wrote:
| The glimpse into the extent of mental corruption necessary
| to self-motivate oneself to spend so much time and effort,
| accumulate and apply expertise, all in the name of killing
| thousands of innocent people do make it difficult to read;
| even more so considering that the discovery of the plan did
| not help prevent its later evolution from causing the 9/11
| --that said, the article is enlightening and I cannot
| remember reading about this plot before (I guess it is too
| unsavoury even for unscrupulous mass media to dig up).
|
| Addendum: as much as it pains me to admit, if I were some
| official feeling responsible for the lives of air
| travellers in %country% and having a say in the policy,
| after studying the details of this plot I can imagine
| myself going "yup, I guess we are banning all liquid then".
| scelerat wrote:
| TIL that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the planner
| of the 9/11 attacks as well as the failed Bojinka plot linked
| above, had his trial for numerous charges (including 9/11)
| restarted just yesterday.
|
| https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/trial-of-
| ac...
| helge9210 wrote:
| We have to wear a sign of obedience on our faces anywhere we go
| for more than a year now. In some countries periodic anal swabs
| are mandatory and even diplomatic status is not an excuse to skip
| one. Not taking about mandatory periodic injection of an unknown
| substance combined with regular mandatory DNA material
| harvesting.
|
| Are we still concerned with shoes at airports?
| reidjs wrote:
| Get TSA precheck
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Cheapest way is with a Nexus card I believe. Great program.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Remember back in the day when the one good thing about the
| airport security line was _not_ having anyone use it as a
| stick for the hard sell?
| davemtl wrote:
| I have Nexus, since getting it no more need to take my shoes
| off or take my laptop/tablet out of my carry-on. You
| practically get waved through security. Also, at the border
| in Canada & US, you effectively skip the line and use the
| Nexus machines allowing you faster entry into the country.
| 5555624 wrote:
| It's also free to US Service members and DoD civilians.
| moftz wrote:
| Some travel credit cards will pay for TSA Precheck for you.
| dpeck wrote:
| No, because we've made it some anyone with the power and means to
| make a change is unaffected by it for a nominal fee.
| tyingq wrote:
| The interesting part to me is that the mode of attack for 9/11
| can't easily be repeated. It depended on passengers assuming the
| plane was being hijacked, and that they would eventually be
| released.
|
| That stopped working on the 3rd (edit: 4th) plane. I don't see
| how it would work again. Passengers now default to assuming
| there's no path to live other than fighting back.
|
| Meaning many of the measures we still take aren't really
| preventing anything. I do understand this doesn't apply to the
| shoes (shoe bomber), but that's just one of many things we've put
| in place.
| moss2 wrote:
| Wishful thinking. Even _if_ passengers assumed there 's not
| path to survive other than fight -- and you're not in a
| position to say that they assume this -- most people will not
| do anything about the hijack anyway.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Flight 93 resulted in a passenger revolt that prevented the
| plane from reaching its intended target.
|
| The underwear bomber was tackled and subdued by fellow
| passengers.
| [deleted]
| monkeynotes wrote:
| It doesn't take 'most' passengers to overpower some people.
| All it takes is one hero to move and others will pile on,
| just one person to break the bystander effect. This is
| scientifically proven with crowd modelling.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > most people will not do anything about the hijack anyway
|
| You don't need most.
|
| Flight 93 demonstrates that the "sit down and be quiet while
| the hostage negotiators work" approach is dead for a while.
| k__ wrote:
| To be fair, while not as big as flying a plane into the WTC,
| blowing one up would still be possible.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Yes, but that has rarely happened in history. And to prevent
| that, we do scan the luggage and make sure that there is no
| unidentified luggage on the plane.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| The shoe scanning is an extension of that, based off of the
| real threat that someone will pack shoes with explosives.
| The only reason it didn't work the last time it was tried
| was that the bomber stayed in their seat as opposed to e.g.
| using the toilet.
| titzer wrote:
| > That stopped working on the 3rd plane.
|
| _4th_ plane. The third plane hit the Pentagon.
| tyingq wrote:
| It does seem like that's the right numbering, thanks. I said
| "3rd" because the flight was hijacked around 9:30am EST. And
| I assume what they heard was news of the first two planes,
| rather than the one that hit the Pentagon.
| antihero wrote:
| Any attempt at this, the terrorists will have a game plan of
| how to convince people on the flight to chill out, that they
| have no mal-intent towards the passengers, etc etc. I mean it
| might not work, but I reckon they'd put on a really good act
| and manipulate people heavily into making it feel like they are
| actually quite safe and it would be a poor decision to try and
| overrun them.
| tyingq wrote:
| I don't see any situation where that works. The only
| variation I can think of that might work is enough hijackers
| to control the passengers, which seems unlikely outside of a
| lightly booked flight or small plane.
| BoHerfIIIJrEsq wrote:
| > how to convince people on the flight to chill out
|
| My sense is that there is nothing they could say. Hijack a
| plane, a bunch of men are going to attack you. That's it.
| ansible wrote:
| Yes, I'd be someone who jumps up to rush the hijackers.
| Because I'd have nothing to lose. And if all I do is soak
| up some damage and die, it may give others behind me a
| chance.
|
| I'm not especially brave or fearless or anything. But if
| you back me into a corner with no way to survive, then I'll
| fight back like a caged, starving rat.
| Stevvo wrote:
| It depends on the social dynamic of the group; for example
| I don't expect a plane full of mainland Chinese passengers
| would attack a terrorist.
| barbazoo wrote:
| People freaking out and being aggressive on planes about
| much less these days...
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| And yet what you're describing has never happened to the best
| of my knowledge (at least in the west).
| [deleted]
| adriancr wrote:
| How would they convince pilots to open the door to let them
| hijack plane?
| kiba wrote:
| So any future attempt requires higher level of competence to
| pull it off, which means it's probably very unlikely that
| such an attack will ever happen again.
|
| If we want to prevent hijacking of planes for terrorism
| purpose, then we'll need to go deeper and fix the root cause
| of extremism which required tons of focused effort, probably
| tackling seemly intractable problems. Not spend billions upon
| billions more on likely ineffectual screening procedure and
| tools to satisfy the surveillance state.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Absolutely. It's not a 9/11-style attack we need to be worried
| about. No one will let a plane get commandeered ever again. The
| 9/11 terrorists took advantage of the "comply with the
| hijackers" policy in place at the time. That opportunity ended
| the moment the second plane hit the towers.
|
| The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general
| public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact
| attack that paralyzed an entire metro region for nearly a
| month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks
| baktubi wrote:
| I think the nation should make military training/civil
| service mandatory. The reality is that random attacks will
| happen in random places and everyone needs to be equipped to
| handle accordingly.
|
| Basic combat training and paramedic abilities, disaster
| recovery and such associated procedures.
|
| This would create a tighter bond between citizens and improve
| communities ability to look after one-another.
|
| If everyone handles those situations steadfastly, terror
| won't work.
|
| Another benefit is less reliance on national guard to handle
| climate crisis like hurricanes, fires, and floods.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > If everyone handles those situations steadfastly, terror
| won't work.
|
| If your response to terrorism is a year of forced military
| training I can assure you the terror already won.
| baktubi wrote:
| For the record I didn't say "a year of forced military
| training."
|
| What if its a 20 year community involvement?
| jcranmer wrote:
| What made the DC sniper attacks so terrifying was that
| there was no commonality to the targets, except that it was
| normal people doing normal everyday things. There's nothing
| you can do to protect yourself from the sniper except to
| not go outside (which is in fact what a lot of people did
| in response to the sniper).
|
| > Basic combat training and paramedic abilities, disaster
| recovery and such associated procedures.
|
| ... Military training teaches none of those, so far as I'm
| aware, except maybe the first. But even then, you're
| getting training on a rifle, which is not the most likely
| firearm a civilian would be carrying.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > What made the DC sniper attacks so terrifying was that
| there was no commonality to the targets,
|
| As a non-car driver, it stood out to me at the time that
| all the events occurred on the road, though of course I
| had no idea of the actual mechanism.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Funny fact is that conscription largely lowers the risk of
| prolonged civil wars, Syrian being one fat exception.
| k7sune wrote:
| It also makes citizens more aware of the cost of war. Had
| conscription use up so much time of a citizen's prime
| years, I think it would be more popular.
| dsomers wrote:
| It's funny how you Americans intellectually masturbate so
| much about putting in place extreme measures like this to
| stop terrorist when in reality you're 10000x more likely to
| die in traffic. However, implementation traffic calming,
| lower speed limits, and better public transit to reduce the
| need for and over all level of risk of personal vehicles,
| is almost never proposed by your type even though it would
| save far far more lives. But I guess
| actually being effective isn't as masculine sounding as
| 'everyone learn to shoot guns!' Lol
|
| For a good example of how to make the public safe in a
| real, non delusional way, look at the infrastructure of the
| Netherlands, and compare road fatalities to the US.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Wouldnt that also equip many attackers with better skills?
| baybal2 wrote:
| It would, no doubt.
|
| I Russia, despite a nominal ban, you can buy a gun on the
| vegetable market, but nobody seem to be going, and
| shooting people out of a sudden other that 2-3 freak
| accidents per year.
|
| Being murdered in a banal armed robbery is a by far
| bigger risk.
| atatatat wrote:
| Vegetable market?
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Inform/flea market
| jkestner wrote:
| Already there. The Oklahoma City bombing is only the most
| notable, but domestic terrorists coming from the military
| is growing. https://www.csis.org/analysis/military-
| police-and-rise-terro...
| baktubi wrote:
| " Most investigations apparently involved veterans, some
| of whom had unfavorable discharge records.3"
|
| Honestly, you're going to have bad apples no matter what.
| But what about the rest of the citizens? How can they
| respond to disaster scenarios without training?
|
| Domestic terrorism is the same thing as abroad terrorism,
| except one uses patriotism as an ideology, the other uses
| religion.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| People make a way. When the Loma Prieta earthquake
| knocked down highways, neighborhood workers and residents
| rescued people from the collapsed structures. The same
| happened in NYC on 9/11 when the WTC fell.
| baktubi wrote:
| It would equip everyone with better skills. But more
| important would be the sense of community involvement--
| most attackers have a disease of the mind brought on by
| isolation and lack of empathy.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| You basically just need to make the odds of encountering
| a trained responder higher than a lone wolf. FWIW, this
| would be a much better approach to the "well regulated
| militia" part of the second amendment than what the US
| has today.
|
| Edit to fix bad quote of "well regulated militia."
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Isn't it actually "well regulated"?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Indeed it is, thanks. But there's still no reason
| training can't be part of the regulations.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Im in favor of people concealed carrying for this exact
| reason...distributed security works better than slow
| centralized security and a vulnerable public. Obviously
| this doesnt work for a plane though.
|
| Fully expect to get downvoted for this on HN...because its
| HN.
| gilrain wrote:
| Or because every actual study has shown this line of
| reasoning isn't backed by reality.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Practically every law enforcement agency is going to
| disagree with you on that. Id like to see these studies
| if you dont mind.
| ben_w wrote:
| You can name even one law enforcement agency that wants
| vigilante firearm violence? Because that is literally
| what it means to desire the general public act as armed
| first responders.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| I downvoted you because you talked about how you were
| going to be downvoted, as I do every time someone
| mentions being downvoted
| cloche wrote:
| In a suddenly chaotic situation how does the distributed
| security communicate and know they're on the same side
| and not treat each other as the enemy?
| trident5000 wrote:
| They teach you this in the course you need to take to
| concealed carry.
|
| If someone is doing massive damage...cornered people in a
| restaurant and is shooting them one by one. Someone can
| respond to that. Youre going to hear it and see it. Not
| every scenario is going to play out perfectly but at
| least theres mitigation on the table.
| cloche wrote:
| Doesn't really answer the question
| ben_w wrote:
| If everyone has a gun, then either you teach this skill
| to everyone _including the bad guys_ [0], or you don't
| teach it to everyone and now a lot of normal people with
| guns are indistinguishable from bad guys with guns.
|
| [0] because if you actually knew they were bad guys
| before you gave them such training you could stop them
| before they fire a single shot
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| You're vastly overrating the ability of the common
| American to make rational decisions. In a stressful
| situation where a gun _may_ be necessary, without proper
| and continual training, that ability drops to near 0.
| Look at the police - they use their guns incorrectly all
| the time and they're trained peace officers. An average
| American, in an argument, maybe mix in some alcohol, with
| a gun in their pocket...many many senseless murders.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Not every person is going to carry a gun. And you need to
| be trained. Thats a requirement to concealed carry today.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| Not in Texas or 18 other states! Get up to date on the
| gun laws.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>distributed security works better than slow centralized
| security and a vulnerable public
|
| Except that it literally doesn't. We know from public
| verifiable stats that people who own a gun end up hurting
| themselves or their family several orders of magnitutde
| more often than defending against an attacker or actually
| using it for self defense. It happens, but the numbers
| clearly point that it's massively ineffective for that
| purpose.
|
| >>Fully expect to get downvoted for this on HN...because
| its HN.
|
| You mean because people on HN frequently believe in the
| power of statistical analysis and logical thinking when
| it comes to deciding when something is worth doing or
| not?
| atatatat wrote:
| > Obviously this doesnt work for a plane though.
|
| I was thinking it absolutely does, unless everyone from
| more than 3ft away starts shooting.
|
| Doubly so if we're talking knives or other sidearms.
|
| Sikh logic, wildly underrated.
| refactor_master wrote:
| Or because the numbers are unequivocally against you?
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| So why not make the public less vulnerable by outlawing
| guns entirely?
| choeger wrote:
| So if I want to create real mayhem I just need to have
| two suicide attackers starting a firefight in roughly
| opposite directions in a crowded open place and wait for
| dozens of bystanders to join in?
| trident5000 wrote:
| I could think of 100 ways you could still do damage to an
| armed public. Whats your point? Its a deterrent and if
| someone is doing massive damage they are going to be
| spotted.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> military training/civil service mandatory. >> Basic
| combat training and paramedic abilities
|
| Those are very different things. Not every soldier is
| taught hand-to-hand combat. Not every civil service
| volunteer is taught to handle a weapon. And basic first aid
| training is almost universal already. More lives could
| probably be saves by everyone being trained in basic mental
| health and de-escalation techniques.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Maybe additional training in first aid helps in a
| terrorist attack, maybe it helps when grandpa has a heart
| attack. At any rate it is hard to see the downside.
| Maybe, except that if you do this in the US you end up
| politicizing first aid too.
|
| The other side of the coin is that we should be focusing
| left-of-bang, preventing terrorism much earlier.
| baktubi wrote:
| Not trying to nail down exactitudes here just throwing
| out some ideas...
| overboard2 wrote:
| What if they don't want to be de-escalated?
| ben_w wrote:
| Then the worst case scenario is the status quo.
|
| But most situations that currently result in someone
| getting shot can be resolved less violently, as
| demonstrated by the _lack of_ firearms carried or desired
| by the majority of UK cops.
|
| A culture shift isn't an overnight thing, but better
| worlds are possible.
| xxxtentachyon wrote:
| Among what populations is it near universal? I grew up in
| an upper-middle class bedroom community, and I only had
| to get first aid certified in order to be a lifeguard at
| a local pool. That was just about a decade ago, and I'd
| be hard-pressed to do anything other than apply a cold
| compress and perform the Heinrich maneuver now. My
| father-in-law was a trained physician overseas but became
| a pharmaceutical researcher when he came to the US, and
| the last time he was in a situation where he had to
| perform CPR, he had no idea what to do. I doubt more than
| 20% of American adults would be useful in a serious
| casualty situation.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _I doubt more than 20% of American adults would be useful
| in a serious casualty situation._
|
| And 99% of those would fear lawsuit.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I'm curious where you get the idea that "Not every
| soldier is taught hand-to-hand combat". It's certainly
| not true in the US Army.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The US army is only one of the US armed forces. The US is
| only one of many countries. Many train soldiers very
| differently than the US does.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Granted, but the US Army is the only one I have direct
| experience with. Hand to hand combat seems like such a
| basic component of combat training that I would be
| shocked to hear that it is completely absent from any
| armed forces boot camp.
|
| You didn't answer the question by the way.
| moreira wrote:
| For the United States specifically, another good argument
| for this training to be in place is the importance given to
| the second amendment, the rationale of which is to have "a
| well regulated militia". One would assume that everyone
| being well trained is part of that.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| Isn't the national guard serving that role ? Normal
| citizens with regular training under well controlled
| regulations.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Perhaps all adults should have that training.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| > No one will let a plane get commandeered ever again.
|
| Won't do much good when the controls are hijacked from terra.
| This narrative on 9/11 being played on this thread is
| poppycock.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4Zj1fnGtjk
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > _The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general
| public like the DC sniper. That 's a very low-cost high-
| impact attack that paralyzed an entire metro region for
| nearly a month._
|
| Or school shootings. That seem to result in no change except
| additional loss of innocent lives.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| That attack was overhyped by the media, which suggest a way
| to stop them.
|
| Personally I am far more concerned by the rent/steal truck
| and mow down pedestrians mode that we have seen in France and
| Germany. You might be able to do more about gun safety. You
| can't really prevent a madman from driving up on the sidewalk
| deliberately and almost any person can rent a van.
| bserge wrote:
| Couple that with a bomb inside the van, ez killscore.
|
| But why kill? Why not attach several 20W lasers to a drone
| and fire them up on a busy bridge/road? Living in suffering
| is a worse fate.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The annoying thing is that, ok there are easier targets
| elsewhere, but if for some reason one of those lone wolfs
| decide to attack planes in particular the long lines created
| by those useless security measures are the obvious target.
| atatatat wrote:
| Long lines for you, not for the policymakers!
|
| Keep voting.
| mywittyname wrote:
| In true capitalist fashion, you can pay to skip the line,
| just like at Disney.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| It gets even better. In order to get my skip-the-line
| pass in Canada, I have to sign my life away to the
| Americans.
|
| (And yes, the card works for US too, but there is no
| Canada-only option, and that's primarily why I got it).
| wycy wrote:
| > The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general
| public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact
| attack that paralyzed an entire metro region for nearly a
| month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks
|
| Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are
| out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more
| common.
| arkh wrote:
| > Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people
| are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much
| more common.
|
| Maybe because your base assumption is wrong: there are not
| many of them.
| dopamean wrote:
| You're right and the two people who have already replied
| to you are a great example of how people on the internet
| love to chime in to "correct" someone about some detail
| of what they said that misconstrues the point. Obviously
| when the previous user said "extremely radicalized
| people" they were talking about the kinds of people
| radicalized to the point that they're willing to start
| killing people. You rightly (imo) point out that there
| aren't that many of them. Then two people chime in to
| "correct" you.
|
| Perhaps writing this reply makes me one of those people
| as well.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Go to a local school board meeting on masks and be
| disabused of this notion fairly quickly.
|
| _edit:_ Votes on this one have been a wild ride.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Why lump parents that don't want masks with plane bombers
| and shooters
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Fair. Terrorists have likely killed far fewer Americans
| with their actions.
|
| We are not good at evaluating the less flashy risks to
| life. Wearing a seat belt saves a lot more lives than
| checking shoes at the airport, but we'll fight the seat
| belt a lot more.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 100yr ago eugenics proponents were saying the same thing
| while bemoaning societies unwillingness to fully embrace
| their solutions. 200yr ago people who wanted to build
| heavy industry were making the same complaints bemoaning
| insufficient investment. And so on and so on.
|
| ~7 billion people aren't stupid. They just don't share
| your prioritization of whatever the societal issues you
| perceive to be most important today are. This trope is
| just a back handed way to call everyone who doesn't agree
| with you stupid, or some variation thereof.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "This minor temporary inconvenience I don't like is as
| bad as eugenics" is its own trope.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If you can suggest some other ~100yo example of something
| a lot of people believed would solve a lot of societal
| problems I'd be happy to edit my comment.
|
| In any case, you're either missing the overarching point
| (the charitable assumption) or you don't want to fight my
| point head on so you're nitpicking that my examples
| aren't good enough (the less charitable assumption).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > If you can suggest some other ~100yo example of
| something a lot of people believed would solve a lot of
| societal problems I'd be happy to edit my comment.
|
| Of the same sort of nature as masking during a pandemic:
|
| Vaccinations, requiring docs to wear gloves during
| surgery, etc.
| saba2008 wrote:
| It's a long way from bickering to violence, and then even
| longer journey from fights to wilful and purposeful
| killing.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Are you suggesting that people who disagree on masking
| children are radicals comparable to jihadi terrorists?
| aww_dang wrote:
| I initially thought he was claiming the inverse, that
| mask proponents were extremists. From the perspective of
| 2019, that wouldn't be an unreasonable assumption, but
| here we are. Today people are advocating using the force
| of the state, in other words violence against those who
| do not share their views on mask mandates.
| stouset wrote:
| Can we kindly stop using hyperbole like "using the force
| of the state, in other words violence" as an argument
| against literally any governmental policy ever?
|
| In this same fantasy universe jack-booted government
| thugs are beating up people who don't wear seat belts or
| who mislabel the nutritional contents on a package of
| cheese, except that's just not what ever actually happens
| in the real world. These kinds of laws can be appropriate
| when they make society better for us all.
|
| To that point, anti-maskers have almost certainly killed
| more Americans at this point than terrorists could ever
| have hoped to. You might consider that when attempting to
| understand why people are seemingly so hard-pressed to
| get laws requiring their countrymen (and women) to do the
| literal bare minimum to protect the lives of their
| neighbors.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Exhibit A: Australia Exhibit B: Canada Exhibit C: New
| Zealand
| aww_dang wrote:
| There's a distinction between a voluntary practice and a
| compulsory practice. The distinction centers around
| individuals being compelled by violence. The kind thing
| to do would be to minimize our use of compulsion as much
| as pragmatically possible.
|
| >Can we kindly stop using hyperbole... anti-maskers have
| almost certainly killed more Americans
| stouset wrote:
| As much as I wish it was, that last sentence is sadly not
| hyperbole.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Well sure. Plenty of people are willing to invoke the
| force of the state over pants mandates and shirt mandates
| too. Masks aren't really any different.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I am suggesting you can find plenty of "crazy, extremely
| radicalized people" in your local community in fairly
| short order.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| There are plenty of radicalized people, but valuing your
| life so little that you'll risk it for the cause _and_
| having a cause that wants you to kill random civilians is
| not very common.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Incels, school shooters, bechildrened fathers, it happens
| a few times per year in most countries. Given they are
| ready to die, it's surprising to me when they kill 1
| instead of 100 people.
| COGlory wrote:
| Perhaps people are less truly radicalized, and
| substantially more negotiable, than we've been lead to
| believe. It certainly benefits both the media and
| politicians to sell us a story that there are an extreme
| number of radicalized people out there.
|
| I've certainly never met any neo-Nazis. Not to say they
| don't exist, but if they are truly as common as I've been
| told, I think I'd have encountered some.
| orwin wrote:
| I happen have a fascist (not neo-fascist, not nazi nor
| neo-nazi) friend. We do have some common points of view.
| We both don't believe in meritocrazy. And part of success
| is cultural and predeterminated (i think 90% is cultural,
| he think 40% of it is, although this percentage rises
| after each of our discussions. My communism seems to wear
| him down /s).
|
| I also happen to know a lot people who have the same
| ideology that he have, on some discord servers, probably
| less sharpened and less cultivated (i mean, you've got to
| read a bit of Nietzsche if you want to argue in good
| faith with this ideology). I'd say they are proto-
| fascist, or proto-nazi. And actually, a lot of people i
| see on the internet called neo-nazi are in fact proto-
| nazi. It's interesting, because i've seen old TV
| interviews of 60s and 70s philosophical debate, i've read
| old books, and they were much, much more philosophically
| advanced than the current debates are.
|
| By the way, i use nazism to make a small distinction with
| "usual" fascism. To me, nazis empathize more on personnal
| success than "regular" fascists, who are more
| deterministic (genes, culture makes more difference than
| effort and good will). I worked that out with my self-
| proclaimed fascist friend, if you disagree i'd like a
| criticism of the idea.
| sgc wrote:
| This is such a terrible argument. 1. You very well might
| never know you have. People with extreme views don't
| advertise them everywhere and at all times. 2. There is
| plenty of video evidence of literal crowds of such people
| in various places and they quite obviously exist in large
| enough numbers to draw these crowds (no group has
| _anywhere near_ 100% participation in events). Your
| anecdotal experience is irrelevant.
|
| Now you might think the threshold for an "extreme number"
| is much higher than drawing this type of crowd, but there
| are enough people for whom that is a big deal, that it
| makes for compelling news that gets views. Way too many
| for me, that's for sure.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Throwing your average Joe on screen garners much fewer
| eyeballs and therefore isn't profitable.
|
| As some who had been lucky enough to live many years in
| both rural Florida and urban California, I can tell you
| beyond a doubt people are mostly (99%) reasonable, and
| mostly the same, they are just acting on different
| priorities, beliefs, and data :)
| weswpg wrote:
| How many people do you encounter? In which parts of the
| country? How much do you know about their political
| views? How do you know whether someone is a Nazi if they
| don't announce it?
|
| You could have met plenty and not known it. Or your
| sample size of acquaintances doesn't include people who
| frequent 4chan.
| mlindner wrote:
| > Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people
| are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much
| more common.
|
| The media overreports on how radical these people are.
| There's very few. However if COVID restrictions keep
| pushing forward I think that may change. Many people are at
| their breaking point right now.
|
| I'm fully vaccinated and I've already decided I'm never
| going to wear a mask again and avoid stores that actually
| enforce mask rules (most don't, even if they put labels on
| doors mandated by the state).
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Even vaccinated folks can have the virus colonizing their
| airways, completely symptom free. Intentionally
| performing acts that could lead to the sickness or death
| of those around you seems pretty anti-social to me.
| taway234qt wrote:
| >> Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people
| are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much
| more common.
|
| They are extremely common, except the main stream "liberal"
| media's definition of "radicalized" and "attack" doesnt
| include the most common incidents. If "radicalized" means
| brown, yes, it isnt common.
|
| If "radicalized" could be expanded to literally hundreds of
| incidents of ethno-religious-nationalist crazies who kill
| with guns -- it is actually really common in the US. Except
| whenever this happens, people instead just talk about how
| perps were "deeply disturbed" and needed help, rather than
| classifying it as "attack" or "terror"
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The DC sniper were two people, with a specially built
| murder car.
|
| So neither lone wolf or low effort.
|
| My guess is that crazy, extremely radicalized people are
| not competent at carrying out high impact attacks. Also,
| very few of them actually want to do such things.
| [deleted]
| sovnade wrote:
| The passengers re-taking the third plane was a stroke of luck.
| That flight was actually delayed long enough that passengers
| were making phone calls to friends and family and heard that
| the first plane (or two) had already crashed, so they knew what
| was happening. That's when they decided to storm the cockpit.
| Had they not been delayed, they probably wouldn't have known
| and not retaken the plane.
|
| edit: but agreed - point being we know now if a plane is
| hijacked, there's very little chance of it coming down
| peacefully.
| plainnoodles wrote:
| I think that's their point, though. When people know their
| only option is to storm the hijackers, they do.
| adriancr wrote:
| Cockpits are now locked by default, so there's no terrorist
| getting in there anymore, they can threaten anything, all it
| would do is divert to closest landing spot.
| bambax wrote:
| Yes, and this is why crazy pilots suffering from depression
| can bury their planes in the ground and nobody can do
| anything about it.
|
| 200 people lost their life in the crash of Germanwings 9525
| on March 24, 2015, but this is not classified as a terrorist
| attack so it doesn't really count for anything.
|
| However, it is the direct consequence of the so-called
| security procedures implemented the world over; those 200
| people are victims of "security".
| kiba wrote:
| The root cause of this is mental illness. Seems to me that
| one of the fix on a deeper level is to improve mental
| health services/living condition.
| benlumen wrote:
| I don't remember the details, but remember reading that
| attack wouldn't have worked under US aviation rules, that
| it took advantage of some EU protocol oversight which was
| subsequently rectified. Don't quote me on it though.
| ridaj wrote:
| Source? This is at best an _indirect_ consequence
|
| EDIT post downvotes: what I mean is that even without a
| lock on the cockpit to prevent their copilot from entering,
| it seems difficult to prevent a determined pilot from
| crashing a plane.
| tyingq wrote:
| It's a pretty well known event. The copilot locked the
| captain out and used the purposefully designed system to
| also disable the cockpit entry code. Of course the
| primary cause wasn't the security setup, but it did
| contribute to the event.
|
| _" The captain had a code to unlock the door, but the
| lock's code panel could be disabled from the cockpit
| controls...The captain then tried to break down the door,
| but like most cockpit doors made after the September 11
| attacks, it had been reinforced to prevent intrusion."_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
| atatatat wrote:
| Our way of life is eroded one indirect cause at a time,
| regularly thought out by those with more time and
| resource to dedicate to guessing the result.
| filleokus wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525#Cau
| se_...
|
| > Robin said that when the captain left the cockpit,
| possibly to use the toilet, Lubitz locked the door,
| preventing anyone from entering. The captain had a code
| to unlock the door, but the lock's code panel could be
| disabled from the cockpit controls. The captain requested
| re-entry using the intercom; he knocked and then banged
| on the door, but received no response. The captain then
| tried to break down the door, but like most cockpit doors
| made after the September 11 attacks, it had been
| reinforced to prevent intrusion.
|
| This seems like a pretty direct consequence to me.
| Similar to how an ultra isloated air-gapped environment
| with only one-way networking[0] would mean that the ops
| people couldn't easily stop e.g an ransomware attack in
| its tracks when detected. It's a cost/consequence of
| having the isolated network in the first place.
|
| (If there was some magic code that always opened the
| cockpit door, then that could be coerced out of someone,
| yielding the system almost pointless)
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidirectional_network
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| This lead directly to the rule that nobody can be alone in
| the cockpit. If you're in the front of the plane when a
| pilot needs to use the toilet you'll see the dance; service
| cart blocks the aisle, flight attendant goes into the
| cockpit, then one pilot comes out.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| To me this sounds like a risk for service cart/flight
| attendant/exiting pilot being overcome and entry gained
| to the cockpit. Even better a hijacker knows exactly when
| the opportunity arises as the service cart will be moved
| into place indicating the dance is about to start.
|
| Furthermore, what's to stop suicide pilot murdering co-
| pilot behind a locked door?
| refactor_master wrote:
| > Furthermore, what's to stop suicide pilot murdering co-
| pilot behind a locked door?
|
| What's to stop anyone from murdering anyone anywhere?
| monkeynotes wrote:
| My point is that if a pilot is determined to murder
| suicide a whole plane because he's suicidal there is
| little you can do realistically.
| ilammy wrote:
| That might be true, but there is a difference in causing
| the deaths of passengers somewhere behind the closed
| doors by crashing the plane -- and dealing with flesh and
| bone co-pilot right here and now.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| Nothing is ever safe though. One can put up obstacles,
| potentially slow it down to make it less likely though.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| But a service cart and flight attendant seems like an
| entirely ineffective obstacle so what's the point? I
| think I don't know enough about how this "dance" works to
| comment, so maybe I'll just shut up :)
| weswpg wrote:
| > Aviation authorities swiftly implemented new
| regulations that required two authorized personnel in the
| cockpit at all times, but by 2017, Germanwings and other
| German airlines had dropped the rule.
|
| happy?
| iso1210 wrote:
| TK1476 in 2006. Flying from an EU country to Turkey on a
| major airline.
|
| "Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato reported that the
| hijacker slipped into the cockpit with a package which could
| have been a bomb when flight attendants opened the cockpit
| door, and the pilots acted according to the international
| rules in the matter and did what the hijacker wanted."
| adriancr wrote:
| There's procedure to leave a tray on corridor and have
| cabin crew protect it so people cant just jump in cabin.
|
| Pilot also can check camera and deny the open.
|
| So having a successful takeover depends on multiple
| failures at same time... chernobyl happened so its not
| impossible but much less likely then before.
|
| At this point id be more worried about pilots or malware on
| flight computers.
| Bud wrote:
| Great, so you found 1 case in the last 20 years where some
| idiot opened the cockpit door. Congratulations. This
| changes nothing.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Changes the power of the original argument/ statement for
| me.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Point is more that this system isn't as secure in
| practice as it is could be. Humans are the weak link
| here.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I wonder if they should have separate external door for the
| cockpit and no door from the cabin to the cockpit. Absolutely
| no chance of hijacking whatsoever.
| sidlls wrote:
| Then how would pilots do things humans need to do, like go
| the restroom or eat (on prolonged flights)?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Then how would pilots do things humans need to do, like
| go the restroom or eat (on prolonged flights)?
|
| With a bathroom on their side of the door, and a packed
| lunch.
| sidlls wrote:
| What about relief pilots on long trips or in the event of
| incapacity?
|
| We could keep going I think: there are numerous downsides
| to maintaining an egress unreachable from the cabin and,
| given the ability to lock down existing doors, few
| superior benefits to justify it.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > What about relief pilots
|
| Well try to use your imagination - them and their
| sleeping compartment would also be in there.
|
| > or in the event of incapacity?
|
| Etc.
| sidlls wrote:
| There's not a lot of room for all that stuff.
| baybal2 wrote:
| It makes no sense anyways.
|
| If it's alleged el qaeda, and their "billions of dollars in
| funding" they would've just raised an army, and razed the
| place.
|
| If someone needs on a principle to have the plane shot out of
| the sky, there are way dumber, and more sure ways to do that
| than trying to get a bomber on board.
| ben_w wrote:
| Al Qaeda was in the middle of losing Afghanistan when the
| shoe thing happened, it's not entirely implausible they'd
| tell some random person to try something dumb.
| jkestner wrote:
| 9/11 was such a singular event for Americans that future
| terrorists don't have to kill people to be successful, if the
| goal is to create enmity and get the US to waste billions of
| dollars. Just an occasional scare will set us off again.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Billions? We've been spending billions _per month_ for twenty
| years.
| voxl wrote:
| You act as if Afghanistan and Iraq are very happy to have
| been invaded and considered it a mission-accomplished. If the
| objective of terror is enrage your adversary then by all
| means, but the U.S. will only be more and more heartless and
| effective at those attacks continue.
| Bud wrote:
| It also depended on unlocked cockpit doors, which are no longer
| a thing.
|
| The shoe bomber FAILED because it's pretty fucking obvious if
| someone is trying to light a shoe on fire.
|
| We don't need the security theater of taking our shoes off. It
| needs to stop.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Until that person goes into the bathroom...?
|
| This kind of argument is honestly a big part of why the
| theater is still in place. People keep making poorly thought
| through arguments about why we don't need it. Those arguments
| are inevitably shot down, and everyone remembers that rather
| than thinking about it for themselves.
| jh0486 wrote:
| Putting the fate of our airline safety to the collective
| bravery of humanity seems like a bad idea to me. If I'm getting
| on a plane, I have no problems taking my shoes off and being
| scanned to have a better chance of a bad scenario not
| happening.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| How many hours of security would you be comfortable with?
|
| At some point, the cost-benefit ratio falls apart.
| mellavora wrote:
| Might not be preventing anything, but they sure are making a
| lot of money for some people.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| Not if we disregard paranoid morons, but that's apparently not an
| option, please don't be a fascist by supporting this garbage.
| glugc wrote:
| 20 years after covid: will we ever stop having mandatory masking
| and monthly lockdowns?
|
| Sounds facetious. I'm sure most people assumed 9/11 restrictions
| to be temporary as well.
| supperburg wrote:
| I just finished Islamic imperialism: a history. The fact that one
| man could change everyone's lives like this is really amazing. It
| doesn't seem like these measures are going to be necessary
| forever though.
| foxyv wrote:
| Honestly, if any politician managed to get rid of TSA checkpoints
| in airports I would vote for him every day of the rest of my
| life. They are just so pointless and intrusive.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Or you can pay a fee and bypass the lines, not remove your
| clothing, whiz through the diplomatic lane at JFK. I think most
| of the screening is less about security and more about selling
| convenience.
| irae wrote:
| I was tempted for a moment to agree. Maybe for the flight
| companies and airports it could be true. But since many of
| those measures became law, then it is a political problem. It
| would bring bad reputation to any politician trying to remove
| the law. So it is a much bigger issue now.
| donclark wrote:
| But why have to pay a fee? Seems like the people that want
| "security theater" should have to pay - not the people that
| want less.
| wefarrell wrote:
| It's amazing that we still have to take our shoes off in airports
| 20 years after 9/11, yet we still don't have mandatory paid sick
| leave in the US despite Covid killing 20 times the amount of
| people.
| mrmcd wrote:
| Just pay the government a $100 bribe^W 'application processing
| fee' for Precheck or Global Entry, and no more taking off your
| shoes. Or taking out your laptops or liquids, or having a
| government employee look you over in the nudie scanner. Also,
| shorter, faster lines.
|
| But all this is actually necessary and not security theater. We
| promise.
| bluedino wrote:
| $85 and it lasts for 5 years. Quite the deal.
| mrmcd wrote:
| Right. GE is $100/5 years. So, might as well pay the extra
| $3/yr for faster passport lines too.
| 99mans wrote:
| The fact the person responsible for the TSA also had a massive
| profit stake in body scanners says everything one needs to know
| about airport "security".
| throwaway20371 wrote:
| I don't have to take my shoes off airports. A govt contractor
| looked at my birth certificate and driver's license and charged
| me $78, and then gave me a special number to put on my boarding
| pass. Now a man at security gives me a little red flag that says
| I don't have to take my shoes off.
|
| Honestly, I don't know why everyone doesn't pay for TSA PreCheck
| and GlobalEntry.
| GDC7 wrote:
| And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at
| you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter.
|
| Also the 10000+ souls at the departing and arrival train station
| also don't matter.
|
| Not to mention the 4000 souls aboard cruise ships.
|
| It ain't about safety from ill-intentioned people...it's about
| protecting the POTUS from having to give the order to open fire
| on an hijacked civilian plane.
|
| That's the reason why every administration is so concerned with
| planes and so lax about trains and buses and cruise ships.
| odiroot wrote:
| > And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look
| at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter.
|
| China takes train security as seriously as the aeroplane
| security. At least for the high speed trains.
| imglorp wrote:
| It's also much easier to get SWAT onto a train or ship or
| stadium. Airplane over a city has only one option.
|
| Oh, and only one of these things will be heading for Congress
| potentially.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I was very surprised by a recent shooting at Chicago Union
| Station: Amtrak finds out this murderer on the run is taking
| a train across the country arriving in Chicago. They don't
| tell anyone on the train this, they don't intercept the train
| in the middle of the night in a small town - they wait until
| the guy detrains at one of the busiest stations in the
| country before chasing him and shooting him. Bizarre.
|
| https://abc7chicago.com/union-station-shooting-chicago-
| shoot...
| anaganisk wrote:
| Duh, all u have to do is increase the speed of the train, and
| derail of the dead end. /s
| ewagsjr wrote:
| So I am not saying you are wrong, but there is the extra
| circumstance of not being able to fly a train into skyscrapers.
| UncleDiaz12 wrote:
| Cruise ships do search you quite thoroughly before boarding,
| but they are looking for booze.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The most they will do with a train is hit it against another
| and i bet the speed is capped anyhow to make turns within the
| system. Much more effective to load a van with bombs and leave
| it someplace. A plane is a cruise missile in comparison and can
| destroy anything you point it at.
| justin66 wrote:
| > And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look
| at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter.
|
| Plenty of people are harassed by DEA, customs or immigration on
| Amtrak trains. They don't seem too concerned with terrorism or
| souls, though.
| docdeek wrote:
| Some years ago I wrote a conference paper [0] pointing to the
| clear difference in security screening for a flight from Lyon
| to Paris, and the same journey taken by TGV. The train would
| have more people on board but no screening of passengers, and
| only a friendly warning that you had to have a ticket to ride
| the train (in practice, you could buy one on the way or not buy
| one at all if you got lucky). The ticket could be bought from a
| machine or counter without ever showing an ID, and anyone could
| load baggage onto the train even without later boarding. It
| seemed to me to be an obvious target for a terrorist who wanted
| to cause some havoc in the French transport sector, and a
| compelling one now that the flights were so locked down and
| difficult to board with ill intentions.
|
| 0: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1621509
| gsnedders wrote:
| I'm surprised to see you didn't mention the 1983 bombing on
| board a TGV!
|
| That said, there's a lot more (remote, exposed)
| infrastructure one could target.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look
| at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter.
|
| In trains with a separate locomotive, passengers cannot even
| get to the driver compartment. In any electrified rail
| scenario, a runaway/commandeered train can be stopped by
| removing the power supply and then diverting the train onto
| catch points. Not to mention that running a red light triggers
| an automated immediate brake in many rail systems.
|
| Of course, breaking into a parked locomotive, starting it and
| overriding the safety systems (deadman switch, red light
| detector) is possible, but it requires _a lot_ of training you
| won 't find online, and without the cooperation of someone at
| the control center all you're going to do is to derail the
| engine (as usually, there is a catch point switch at the entry
| of every branch onto the main track, that is by default
| pointing to the catch point).
|
| > Also the 10000+ souls at the departing and arrival train
| station also don't matter.
|
| Agreed, but bomb/poison threat is a risk at _every_ large
| building.
|
| > Not to mention the 4000 souls aboard cruise ships.
|
| It's incredibly difficult to pull off a fatal attack using a
| commandeered (cruise) ship as a weapon - wannabe pirates would
| need to control the entire bridge and the machine room as well
| as any auxiliary control points (e.g. for guides) that allow a
| remote shutdown of the engines. And even assuming attackers
| _do_ gain control of a ship... a ship is slow, and cost guard
| will intervene if they notice you on a dangerous collision
| course.
| GDC7 wrote:
| Again your message proves that you think about the people
| outside the vehicle as A-class citizens and those aboard as
| B-class citizens.
|
| There are 300+ people on a train and 4000+ on a cruise ship,
| those things don't need to be used as a weapon to cause a
| very sad day for the whole Nation in terms of human lives
| lost.
|
| Even if the thing is not used as a weapon.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It is extraordinarily difficult to kill or maim people on
| land using a ship as a weapon - it will simply run aground,
| and there are guides aboard on ships big enough to cause
| damage when they are near the shore, as an additional
| defensive measure against incompetence and hijackings
| (insert obligatory Ever Given meme here).
|
| For trains, the situation is similar. Even if you manage to
| bomb a train, it's unlikely to cause a major, deadly
| disaster. Rail infrastructure is _built_ with the
| assumption that trains will get out of control, and the
| industry has nearly 200 years of experience.
|
| Trains, ships and airplanes are ineffective weapons that
| need a lot of knowledge to turn into an actual weapon. A
| truck is way more effective: easy to acquire, easy to use,
| and even right in the middle of an attack people will
| assume that the driver has lost control or has medical
| issues instead of being a terrorist.
| valarauko wrote:
| I would rather compare the train/cruise ship to a packed
| theater/stadium, rather than a commandeered aircraft used
| as a kinetic weapon. You have potentially thousands of
| vulnerable people in an enclosed space with no realistic
| means of escape. The idea that a bombed train isn't going
| to be a major disaster is baffling to me. Train
| derailments invariably cause massive casualties to those
| on board. Heck, lock the doors and start a fire.
| GDC7 wrote:
| Again you are you writing off the 300 people on a train
| and the 4000 aboard a cruise ship.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I'm not writing anyone off, I'm only stating the fact
| that it is virtually impossible to use ships and trains
| for terrorist purposes.
| GDC7 wrote:
| In what world is taking possession of a ship/train using
| violence and offing everybody on board not terrorism?
| varnaud wrote:
| Thank god.
|
| If I can get a train to go from A to B, I usually take the
| train. You can arrive at the train station 5 minutes before
| departure and make it to the train. It's just an overall more
| comfy experience, mostly thanks to the seamless process of
| getting on it, not having to worry about the water bottle in
| your backpack and arriving almost directly in the city center
| with just a few minutes to get off the train and train station.
|
| You can't hijack a train or a boat and make it crash wherever
| you want. I also assume it's much easier to respond to a train
| or cruise ship hijack and avoid having to kill everyone on
| board.
| GDC7 wrote:
| > You can't hijack a train or a boat and make it crash
| wherever you want
|
| No, but I am astounded by how you are writing off the 300
| people on a train and the 4000 on a ship.
|
| You'd be effectively trapped aboard with hijackers who'd not
| hesitate to off everybody .
| jedberg wrote:
| The way you know it is all security theater is TSA pre. I haven't
| taken my shoes off, my laptop out, or gone through the hands-on-
| your-head scanner in years, because the TSA pre-check line
| doesn't require any of that.
|
| Because apparently verifying my ID before arrival at the airport
| makes me less of a threat.
|
| Or maybe it's the $80 they get every few years that makes me less
| of a threat...
| rtkwe wrote:
| Isn't it also the preliminary and ongoing background check.
| Essentially they're saying we can check you well enough to
| decide if you're a 'threat'.
| jedberg wrote:
| See my sibling comment, the TSA does a background check on
| everyone who flies already. The difference is that with Pre
| you have a unique number instead of a possibly non-unique
| name.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Cross checking against no-fly is different than a full
| background check. My guess is they're running a very light
| check but Pre digs deeper into your history.
| wyldfire wrote:
| Aside: when I talk about this program, I refer to it as "T-S-A
| precheck" because it's depicted as "TSA Pre <checkmark>".
|
| I often hear it referred to as "TSA Pre" and it seems to be the
| case here too. I agree that the signage is unclear but I don't
| think it's intended to be called "TSA Pre".
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Until this specific thread I've never seen or heard it
| referred to as "TSA Pre". It has always been precheck. I
| suppose now I'll start to notice people doing it.
| jedberg wrote:
| I'm just lazy and call it TSA Pre. :)
| wyldfire wrote:
| Hmm. So it's a deliberate abbreviation? I'd always assumed
| that folks who referred to it that way didn't know the
| actual name because of the icon in place of 'check'.
| jedberg wrote:
| In my case it is. I'm sure a lot of people do it because
| of the check mark.
| skyo wrote:
| Right, TSA even refers to it as "TSA PreCheck" on their
| website: https://www.tsa.gov/precheck
| carabiner wrote:
| TSA Pre requires fingerprinting and a background check. You
| definitely give up some privacy in signing up for it. I mean
| you can unlock some computer devices with fingerprints.
| jedberg wrote:
| The government already has my fingerprints, because I had to
| give them to get a passport (edit: I've been informed this
| was only because I also did Global Entry) and also when I was
| in elementary school they fingerprinted everyone and also
| when I got my driver's license.
|
| Pretty much if you're a US citizen they already have your
| fingerprints.
| extra88 wrote:
| U.S. passports do _not_ require getting fingerprinted. U.S.
| _Visas_ require fingerprinting.
|
| I don't think fingerprinting kids is universal or even the
| norm. I haven't found anything that says it's required
| anywhere. I have found information about parents having
| their child's fingerprints in their own records and
| examples of programs emphasizing that only the family has
| the record, they're not kept by local government, let alone
| in a federal system.
|
| https://www.usa.gov/passport
|
| https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-
| inf...
|
| https://www.pcsdma.org/fingerprint.html
|
| https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2006/july/id
| k...
| cammikebrown wrote:
| I remember cops coming to my elementary school (this
| would have been around 1995) and fingerprinting everyone
| "for fun".
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I had this happen too. We put our fingerprints onto an
| "ID" card we got to keep. As far as I remember the
| fingerprints didn't actually go anywhere else.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I don't remember having fingerprints done for my passport,
| though it was twenty years ago. Did that change?
| vowelless wrote:
| Finger prints for passports is not a thing.
| simonklitj wrote:
| Definitely! Or if you're a green card/visa holder.
| extra88 wrote:
| If you need a U.S. Visa, fingerprints are required. U.S.
| citizens and people from Visa Waiver countries don't need
| to be fingerprinted.
|
| https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-
| inf...
| simonklitj wrote:
| Oh, good to know! I thought so, my wife had hers taken
| when she got her passport. Maybe because it was at an
| embassy? Either way, thanks for the clarification.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > because I had to give them to get a passport
|
| As far as I know that isn't a requirement for a standard US
| Passport (maybe a Diplomatic/Government/Service passport?).
|
| Who even would take the fingerprints? I went to the USPS,
| and they just checked the form, stamped it a few times, and
| shipped it along with my supporting documents off.
|
| > also when I was in elementary school they fingerprinted
| everyone.
|
| That also isn't standard/normal.
| adolph wrote:
| > when I was in elementary school they fingerprinted
| everyone
|
| Yes, they put it on your permanent record which any govt
| official can access using a simple zoom and enhance.
| jedberg wrote:
| You joke but the permanent record is a real thing. My
| wife taught elementary school for many years, and at the
| end of the year she had to update all the permanent
| records and then pass them on to the next teacher. The
| records moved with you from school to school.
|
| Some High Schools allow you to request your permanent
| record when you graduate, most just destroy them.
|
| But yes, a government official can get a copy with a
| warrant just like any other record.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Didn't have to fingerprint for a passport, but did for a
| Texas driver's license with some hand wavy reason I don't
| remember.
| extra88 wrote:
| That was only true for a relatively short period of time.
|
| https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-no-longer-collecting-
| all-10-...
| nielsbot wrote:
| Doesn't mean they didn't keep the records
| nielsbot wrote:
| The article you linked says they will collect a single
| finger print for a driver's license, they no longer
| collect all 10.
| js2 wrote:
| > Pretty much if you're a US citizen they already have your
| fingerprints.
|
| False.
| https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-
| app...
|
| My spouse and I renewed our passports in the last 10 years,
| and got our kids passports for the first time. We did not
| provide fingerprints.
|
| I am a U.S. citizen. I went through an SF86 clearance in
| the early 2000s and don't recall even that requiring my
| fingerprints (but I could be wrong about that). I only
| recall giving up my fingerprints twice:
|
| 1. To unlock my Apple devices, safely locked in a secure
| enclave. 2. For TSA Pre.
| jmisavage wrote:
| I distinctly remember getting fingerprinted for my
| clearance paperwork. And those that get TS/SCI have to
| get polygraph test every couple years.
| jandrese wrote:
| There are multiple clearances with different
| requirements, so it is possible that certain types
| require finger prints while others do not. However, AFAIK
| everybody who gets a clearance also has their
| fingerprints taken. The finger prints may not be
| available to regular LEO for dragnets to reduce the
| chance of leaking out the personal information of every
| cleared individual to foreign agents that have
| infiltrated law enforcement.
| js2 wrote:
| > However, AFAIK everybody who gets a clearance also has
| their fingerprints taken.
|
| Ah, you're right. I just found some correspondence
| related to the clearance and I did indeed provide
| fingerprints. The company I was working for at the time
| apparently was working with the NSA. I have almost no
| recollection of this. Maybe the MIB wiped my mind.
|
| > finger prints may not be available to regular LEO for
| dragnets to reduce the chance of leaking out the personal
| information of every cleared individual to foreign agents
| that have infiltrated law enforcement.
|
| I don't know how far back this leak went, but I wouldn't
| be surprised if my info was part of https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...
| tcoff91 wrote:
| You didn't have to give your fingerprints when you got a
| driver's license?
| js2 wrote:
| No, never. I've had licenses in FL, GA, NC and CA.
| bregma wrote:
| Where on earth would people accept such an encroachment
| on their privacy and right to unreasonable search and
| seizure just to obtain proof they have passed an
| examination? Soviet Russia? The DDR? Orwell's Oceania?
| jedberg wrote:
| It isn't just proof you passed an exam -- it's also your
| ID card. The fingerprints are part of your government ID.
| Here in California you have to give a thumbprint or
| fingerprint to get both a license and a state issued ID
| card. The license serves as both proof of passing and as
| an ID so you don't need two cards.
| deathanatos wrote:
| I had to give up my fingerprints to maintain a drivers
| license, but that doesn't get me TSA Pre.
| extra88 wrote:
| I'm having trouble finding any state where a standard
| drivers license currently requires being fingerprinted.
| Texas did it for a little while but stopped in 2015. Some
| specialty licenses require it, like a commercial license to
| carry hazardous materials.
| jedberg wrote:
| California requires your thumbprint (or fingerprint if
| you have no thumbs) to get your license.
| extra88 wrote:
| I've seen second-hand references to that but only find
| references to prints being taken for occupational
| licenses on authoritative sites, like this one:
|
| https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-
| services/occu...
| pb7 wrote:
| "REAL ID" requires fingerprints, which will soon be
| required to fly.
| acdha wrote:
| Pre seems like a nice service for terrorist groups, too: sign
| up your deep-cover types and have them make some benign
| flights. If the TSA is on to your group, you'll get a
| notification in the mail that your Pre status has been revoked.
| dreyfan wrote:
| It's 100% this. Artificial inconveniences created to convince
| people to willingly give up all their information past,
| present, and future for government surveillance. That they
| additionally convinced us to pay $80 for that is just
| perfection.
| chadlavi wrote:
| > give up all their information past, present, and future for
| government surveillance
|
| Buddy, who do you think issued me the passport, social
| security card, birth certificate, and driver's license I used
| to get TSA Precheck?
| dreyfan wrote:
| The government is utterly terrible at any sort of cross-
| division or state vs federal information sharing. TSA is a
| relatively new agency (homeland) and needed to build up
| that data mostly from scratch.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| The rollout of TSA Pre confirmed my belief that TSA is a
| worthless hinderance on travel. But, it is par for the course
| with anything remotely political. Create a solution to a
| problem that is outsized for the risk. This solution creates a
| new problem. Offer a workaround for the newly created problem
| instead of removing the previous solution.
|
| Most of the political solutions I see tossed around are
| bandages on wounds inflicted by current policies. Nobody ever
| suggests removing the policy that is actually causing the
| problem in the first place.
| stormbrew wrote:
| I mean, I agree in general but it is also likely that they're
| performing at least some kind of background check on you when
| you participate in Pre. They definitely do with Nexus. It does
| make a certain degree of sense as a program if you believe in
| the premise of the entire security theatre apparatus to begin
| with. Especially within the US where domestic air travel has
| traditionally required very weak identification (driver's
| license).
|
| That is, you're paying them for the privilege of reducing their
| attack surface a little bit.
| jedberg wrote:
| They run a background check on you whenever you buy an
| airline ticket. The airline submits their manifest to the TSA
| to cross check with the no-fly list. The only thing that TSA
| pre does is give you a number that is unique to you (as
| opposed to a name that you may share with someone else). They
| could easily solve this by having you submit your SSN or
| Passport number whenever you buy an airline ticket.
|
| I agree on Nexus, they basically do the entry interview ahead
| of time and then assume the answers are the same until they
| aren't (I have that too). That one actually makes sense.
| stormbrew wrote:
| The no-fly list isn't really a background check. It's just
| a simple name match, and it catches people who aren't on it
| because of that. An interview (like nexus or customs) also
| isn't a background check. These are three separate things.
| Everyone gets a check on the no-fly list, some people get
| advance background checks (Pre and programs like it I'd
| expect), and fewer still get an actual interview
| (international travellers who also have to supply a
| passport).
|
| Having a unique ID number tied to other information about
| you (like your license ID number or passport number or SSN)
| allows for a more in depth check, no doubt in ways you
| probably don't even explicitly consent to.
|
| If they _did_ have your ssn or passport number from the
| airline at ticket purchase time then sure, that would allow
| for the same thing. But they don 't. And if they did it'd
| be pretty expensive to do it for everyone. So, the current
| solution is basically just to make (some) people pay for
| their own background check.
| rtkwe wrote:
| > domestic air travel has traditionally required very weak
| identification (driver's license).
|
| They have been trying to bump that requirement to RealID for
| years but a lot of states still don't issue it as their
| default license/ID so less than half of IDs in the US are
| compliant with the RealID standards. It's been pushed back
| for years maybe a decade by now? I wonder how long it'll be
| until it actually gets implemented.
| chadcatlett wrote:
| Real ID has been implemented in every state and most
| territories. Not all share their databases with each other,
| but that isn't a requirement for usage for using the ids
| for air travel in the US.
|
| After a few big delays, the deadline for having a compliant
| id for domestic air travel is 2023-05-03.
|
| I personally had a bad experience attempting to get a
| compliant id when I lived in Arizona. At the time you could
| select if you wanted a compliant id or a non-compliant id.
| My wife and I both selected on the form to get compliant
| driver's license. Unfortunately when the physical licenses
| came in the mail they had they weren't compliant and had
| text indicating they weren't valid for federal
| identification.
|
| We tried to get them to change this and they refused.
| Friends had experienced the same issue at the time, but
| I've been told they now have valid ones that you can get
| more easily.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Yeah they all offer it but at least in my state it's an
| additional cost which means a lot of people will choose
| the cheaper easier option. Also that deadline has been
| changed many many times and I bet it will again in/before
| 2023 if adoption rates don't increase a lot.
|
| I just recently refreshed my ID and got a RealID pretty
| easily at least. The trickiest piece was making sure I
| had all my documents, had to print out a cable bill
| because all my bills are paperless now and mortgage
| papers (one of the few I've kept paper bills on for)
| didn't count on their list.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Exactly, it will never go away for the same reason the
| unskippable ads in between turns on the hottest new mobile game
| will never go away. It's the torture designed to get you to pay
| up.
| krastanov wrote:
| Regretfully, "Available to US citizens, nationals and LPRs"
| only.
| Tenoke wrote:
| For comparison I think I've been asked once out of my last 50
| flights to take my shoes off in Europe and it still feels too
| stringent here.
| jarjoura wrote:
| Since we can't realistically ask everyone to succumb to
| background checks we at least have to put in some safety checks
| along the way.
|
| It's by design that it's annoyingly slow to get through airport
| security. It prevents people from rushing into the airport and
| rushing onto a plane unnoticed. What may look like incompetence
| is actually very meticulously structured.
|
| I really don't think it's that big of a deal. Besides, as
| airports are going through remodeling they are getting more and
| more comfortable to hang out in.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Disney Springs in Orlando has new metal detectors that you just
| walk through, wondering if airports will eventually feature the
| same. I kind of doubt it though.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There's the body scanners, but I don't know if they can detect
| anything weird in shoes.
|
| That said, how many shoe bombs have they intercepted? That
| should be a pretty good indication about whether it's still
| necessary, and I like to think the policy change (or lack
| thereof) is data-driven.
| depaya wrote:
| I've never liked the argument "how many shoe bombs have been
| intercepted?" or "how many terrorists have been stopped?"
| when it comes to TSA-style security. The presence of the
| security isn't necessarily meant to find people _in the act
| of carrying out terrorism_ , it's mean to deter it in the
| first place since you _will be_ found out (well, in theory
| anyway...). It 's impossible to quantify how many plots have
| been _deterred_ due to this.
|
| I'm no TSA apologist, it's obviously security theater, but is
| it totally without merit?
| k1t wrote:
| Isn't hard to plenty of articles like these, so it
| certainly seems like they'd be ineffective at preventing an
| actual terrorist:
|
| _According to officials briefed on the results of a recent
| Homeland Security Inspector General's report, TSA agents
| failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly
| able to get potential weapons through checkpoints._
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-
| fin...
|
| _"In most cases, they succeeded in getting the banned
| items through. 17 out of 18 tries by the undercover federal
| agents saw explosive materials, fake weapons or drugs pass
| through TSA screening undetected," KMSP reported, citing
| unnamed sources familiar with the operation._
|
| https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/6/tsa-failed-
| det...
| iso1210 wrote:
| I have a rock that deters tigers you might want to buy
| brigandish wrote:
| In Greece I would sometimes encounter packs of aggressive
| dogs roaming the streets. If you bend down and reach for
| the ground like you're about to pick up a stone then they
| disperse immediately. There doesn't even need to be a
| stone there.
|
| I've not had the chance to try it with a tiger but if it
| works with them too then I'm afraid you won't fetch much
| for your stone.
| [deleted]
| wjp3 wrote:
| I always refer to it as "security Kabuki theatre"...
| duxup wrote:
| So much security that not sense.
|
| I attend college football games. Everyone goes through security.
| Outside security we pack up in masses of humanity outside the
| gates waiting to get through the inevitably slow security.
|
| It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude
| to the density of humanity there where there is no security ...
| than in the stadium where people are actually more spread out.
|
| If someone did want to do something at such a sporting event,
| nothing is stopping them from doing it at the gates where there
| is a reliable and unsecured mass of humanity, and I don't think
| anyone is bothering with that ...
|
| I used to wheel my grandfather into games on a wheelchair... they
| didn't check anything, just waved you through. A wheel chair
| sized bomb would be easy to bring in, but you don't even have to
| bring it in.
|
| We have secure ID schemes that I believe most if not all of the
| 9/11 attackers would have qualified to get ...
|
| In the US we don't have mass terrorist events that any of this
| would prevent.
|
| Why do we keep subjecting non-terrorists to these systems?
|
| What are we doing this for?
| nashalo wrote:
| > What are we doing this for?
|
| I think we are doing these mostly useless things in order to
| signal that as a society we're somewhat careful in order to
| reassure people. I feel our best security defense is that most
| people are not terrorists?
| meragrin_ wrote:
| > nothing is stopping them from doing it at the gates where
| there is a reliable and unsecured mass of humanity,
|
| Doing it at the gates is not going to be seen live by millions.
| Having it seen by the masses in real time and without warning
| is far more effective than having it merely reported.
| TroisM wrote:
| > It would be far more effective to do something at the gates
| dude to the density of humanity there where there is no
| security
|
| Maybe the goal is to protect the people that are inside...
| players, managers, etc...
| bserge wrote:
| The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting their
| own freedoms. It has worked amazingly well so far.
|
| To any motivated anti-society organization or person, this is
| huge leverage. A few deaths leading to a noticeably more
| authoritarian state? What's not to love?
|
| It doesn't even matter if the authorities do their job and
| punish those responsible, the people will still choose to
| restrict their own freedoms and makes their lives worse for
| more "security".
| lexapro wrote:
| >The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting
| their own freedoms.
|
| There are many possible motives for terrorism but I highly
| doubt this is one of them, even though people love to repeat
| it for some reason.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| "Terrorism" in the broad sense of the act does not have a
| goal. Because it is a means to an end, not an end itself.
|
| Terrorists do what they do for many reasons. Some are
| political, some are due to sectarianism. Sometimes its
| because they are crazy and have irrational motivations.
|
| Rarely is it the goal of the terrorist to force a society
| into tyranny.
|
| Timothy McVeigh was seeking revenge.
|
| Bin Laden was trying to force the US to change its foreign
| policy.
|
| ISIS was trying to conquer the middle east.
|
| Aum Shinrikyo were a doomsday cult.
|
| So on and so on.
| rswail wrote:
| Which is why the "War on Terror" never made one iota of
| sense. It's like having a "War on Tank Charges" or a "War
| on Carpet Bombing".
|
| Terrorism is a tactic and wars on Nouns (Terror, Drugs,
| etc) never make sense.
| lexapro wrote:
| It can be an end to itself and it often is: retaliation
| thereddaikon wrote:
| No that's still an agenda. Nobody becomes a terrorist
| just because. There is always a motivation and goal. You
| say retaliation makes it an end to itself but I give as a
| counter Timothy McVeigh. He was seeking revenge and
| sending a message. Terrorism is a tactic used to achieve
| a specific goal.
| lexapro wrote:
| But then no human behavior is and end to itself. All
| behavior can be described as a "tactic used to achieve a
| specific goal".
| goto11 wrote:
| > The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting
| their own freedoms. It has worked amazingly well so far.
|
| No it isn't. Not any more than it is the goal of burglars to
| get people to invest in home security. The goal of terrorism
| is to use attacks on civilians to achieve political goals,
| like getting Northern Ireland out of the UK or get the US out
| of the Middle East.
|
| Why would terrorists care how much the enemy restricts their
| _own_ freedom? Just because something hurt your enemy does
| not mean it helps you get closer to your goal.
| thecrash wrote:
| > Just because something hurt your enemy does not mean it
| helps you get closer to your goal.
|
| I think that's a good general observation, but a key
| assumption of terrorism is that hurting your enemy /will/
| pressure them to do what you want.
|
| Terrorism is all about out unconventional ways of bringing
| pain to your enemy, rather than just defeating their
| military in combat. So I think terrorism can definitely be
| intended to sow fear, paranoia, overreaction, internal
| division, etc within the enemy civil society.
|
| Not as the end goal, but as part of the strategy of
| inflicting paint to pressure them to capitulate.
| mLuby wrote:
| To quibble: terrorism is using dramatic violence to achieve
| political ends. It just so happens that the victimized
| society often wants to increase security.
|
| The US had at least 3 major responses to 9/11:
| 1) seek revenge (invade Afghanistan, kill Bin Laden),
| 2) armor up (Dept. of Homeland Security), and 3) unify
| under nationalism (flags everywhere).
|
| It's pretty easy to imagine a timeline where some or none of
| those happened.
| lexapro wrote:
| In the case of 9/11 the most likely motive was retaliation.
| If you could ask the terrorists, they would tell you that
| America terrorized them first (I'm not saying that's
| accurate).
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >The stated goal of the attacks was to show Americans
| that their continuous war and support for secular
| dictators in the Muslim world would come with high cost,
| and to force the American government to retreat from the
| Middle East. This of course backfired spectacularly.
|
| No, this was not his goal, and no it did not fail. His
| stated goal was to recreate the mujahedeen success
| against the Soviet Union, where they used low cost
| guerrilla fighting to draw out a costly and unpopular war
| until it bankrupted the Soviets _and then_ they retreated
| from Afghanistan. It is debatable how much effect the
| cost of the Afghan war had on the collapse of the Soviet
| Union, but the key is that Bin Laden believed it.
|
| His goal was to drive out the Americans _eventually_.
| There is no evidence or reason to believe he thought that
| 9 /11 would directly lead to American withdrawal from the
| Greater Middle East.
|
| >"We--with Allah's help--call on every Muslim who
| believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply
| with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder
| their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also
| call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to
| launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's
| supporters allying with them, and to displace those who
| are behind them so that they may learn a lesson." Osama
| Bin Laden's 1998 Fatwa [1]
|
| Even in 2004, we knew that Al Qaeda propaganda fueled by
| US invasions of Muslim countries was strengthening, not
| weakening, Al Qaeda.
|
| "Any assessment that the global terror movement has been
| rolled back or that even one component, Al Qaeda, is on
| the run is optimistic and most certainly incorrect. Bin
| Laden's doctrines are now playing themselves out all over
| the world. Destroying Al Qaeda will not resolve the
| problem." 2004 M.J. Gohel, head of the Asia-Pacific
| Foundation, a London think tank [2]
|
| And in his own words, what Bin Laden wanted out of the
| Afghan war, in 2004. Russia lasted 10 years before they
| were "forced to withdraw in defeat". The US made almost
| made it to 20.
|
| >"Even though we are in the fourth year after the events
| of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion,
| deception and hiding from you the real causes. And thus,
| the reasons are still there for a repeat of what
| occurred"
|
| >"All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to
| provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to
| do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to
| raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in
| order to make the generals race there to cause America to
| suffer human, economic, and political losses without
| their achieving for it anything of note other than some
| benefits for their private companies."
|
| >"This is in addition to our having experience in using
| guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight
| tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin,
| bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was
| forced to withdraw in defeat." Bin Laden Interview in
| 2004 [3]
|
| [1] https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm
|
| [2] https://www.globalissues.org/article/512/the-new-
| face-of-al-...
|
| [3] https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/september-11th
| /911-ac...
| thereddaikon wrote:
| We actually know their motivations because Bin Laden
| didn't hide his agenda. He wrote a fair bit on the topic.
| He wanted to force a change in US foreign policy to stop
| supporting Israel specifically and to leave the middle
| east in general. He saw himself as an Islamic anti-
| imperialist. It was actually pretty straight forward.
|
| step 1: have big terrorist attack on American civilians
|
| step 2: American civilians ask "why me?", his words not
| mine btw.
|
| step 3: civilians find out what US gov has been doing in
| the middle east and call for change.
|
| In hindsight its an incredibly naive plan. And I think it
| ironically shows a lack of knowing your enemy on his
| part. Americans don't take well to being attacked or
| intimidated. If you want them to leave you alone the
| worst thing you can do is provoke them to action.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| There's nothing hypothetical about it. I'm actually
| baffled at the fact that people here infer random
| motivations when Usama bin Laden gave interviews as far
| back as the early 90s and held multiple speeches after
| 9/11.
|
| The stated goal of the attacks was to show Americans that
| their continuous war and support for secular dictators in
| the Muslim world would come with high cost, and to force
| the American government to retreat from the Middle East.
|
| This of course backfired spectacularly. Revenge is
| certainly a primary motivation, too, but I really don't
| think there is much room on the interpretation for the
| initial motivation because Al Qaeda was always very open
| and clear about it.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| It's funny, but in a way, he accomplished his goal of
| getting us out of the middle east. Our weariness with our
| involvement in the middle east has caused a _big_ push
| for energy independence.
|
| We fracked our way back to being the worlds largest oil
| producer. That, and our transition to a greener economy
| is bad news for middle eastern oil producers. We're much
| more willing to leave the entire region to their own
| miserable devices.
|
| Biden is getting a lot of flack for pulling out of
| Afghanistan, and yes, he completely dropped the ball on
| the organization of the withdrawal, but if it means that
| not one more drop of american blood is shed, it's worth
| it.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Anand Gopal's article in the New Yorker this month shows
| how the Afghan Army (including the media darling Sami
| Sadat) was wasting civilians in Helmand using the vaunted
| Black Hawks we gave them and calling it progress.
| rswail wrote:
| I'd say it's been remarkably successful.
|
| The US has abandoned Syria, Iraq, Kurds. It still has
| some sway with Saudi Arabia and Israel, none in Egypt or
| Libya.
|
| The withdrawal from Afghanistan is a culmination of that.
|
| The neo-conservative response to Al Qaeda was exactly
| what was needed to provoke this collapse over 20 years.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Yes, but that took 20 years. Before, they got a war and
| permanent drone terror plus a massive amount of ground
| troops. I doubt 9/11 has anything to do with them
| retreating now; in fact, it's probably helping that the
| scars heal.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The US has abandoned Syria, Iraq, Kurds.
|
| It wasn't much involved in any of those (and indeed had
| already _abandoned_ the Kurds after the conflict which
| motivated the formation of al-Qaeda) when al-Qaeda
| actually got organized. It got _reinvolved_ with them
| largely enabled by the political fallout from 9 /11.
|
| > The withdrawal from Afghanistan is a culmination of
| that.
|
| Again, that's mostly a reversion to the _status quo
| ante_.
| goto11 wrote:
| At the time of the 9/11 attacks, the US did not have
| bases in in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. Bin Laden was
| complaining about US presence in Saudi Arabia and Israel.
| So even with recent withdrawals, the US presence is only
| back at the level at the tine of the attacks. I don't see
| how this can in any way be construed as successful?
|
| The purpose of the 9/11 attacks was to get the American
| public to demand the US withdraws support to Israel and
| Saudi Arabia. This has clearly failed.
| gruez wrote:
| > 3) unify under nationalism (flags everywhere)
|
| People flying flags everywhere weren't a thing in the 80s
| or 90s?
| xxpor wrote:
| The few months after 9/11 were something else when it
| came to flags. They were EVERYWHERE.
| [deleted]
| rswail wrote:
| Not as much and not as rabid. Combination of the
| Gringrich bullshit "culture issues" of the 90s and the
| initially patriotic and then nationalistic response to
| 9/11.
| godshatter wrote:
| The part of our response that disappointed me the most was
| the way people ostracized any other way of thinking during
| that time period.
|
| Suggestions that we shouldn't overreact because it plays
| right into their hands and that we shouldn't give up rights
| to the government out of simple fear that we'd just regret
| later didn't just go unheeded, they were vehemently
| attacked. It was worse polarization by far then we're
| seeing now, and it wasn't a more-or-less 50/50 split and
| didn't follow party lines.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| They have achieved little. Put Islam in a bad light,
| marginalize Muslims in the West and Muslim countries are
| still dirt poor.
| duxup wrote:
| >The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting
| their own freedoms. It has worked amazingly well so far.
|
| I don't think that makes sense.
|
| If say terrorist actions resulted in the opposite, say a
| nation providing less security / fewer restrictions:
|
| We would then logic it out and say the goal of terrorism is
| to restrict fewer freedoms and thus allow the terrorists more
| freedom to do whatever it is they wanted.... including more
| terrorism.
|
| But that's obviously also not the point of terrorism.
|
| Terrorists are pushing their own political agenda via
| violence, that's it, the result isn't necessarily some intent
| / scheme. If they don't get what they ultimately want, I
| don't think they give a damn about security or etc.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| This actually isn't the goal of terrorism. I've studied
| terrorism and the definition is essentially non-state actors
| using violence for political means.
|
| Now we can go in to various conspiracies from "Bush planned
| 9.11 as a false flag" to "Bush ignored intelligence reports
| so he could launch the war on terror," but those are mostly
| just unproven conspiracies unrelated to what al-Qaeda wanted.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > non-state actors
|
| States can, have, and do engage in terrorism.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| It has been conveniently memory holed by Western media
| but Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had deep ties with Al
| Qaeda.
|
| How many Americans even know Bin Laden was hiding out in
| Pakistan for years after 11/9?
| platz wrote:
| Not if the definition of terrorism I use is one of the 11
| definitions that preclude that possibility.
| KKKKkkkk1 wrote:
| What is the appropriate word to use for Iran blowing up a
| Jewish cultural center in Argentina?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing
|
| Note that the word "terror" appears 34 times in that
| Wikipedia article.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Yes, some definitions are crappy.
|
| Do we have a word for "imperialist government uses
| violence against people to achieve political goals"?
|
| Because "it's not terrorism because it's a state" is
| always gonna stink of trying to dodge the topic on a
| technicality.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| This is either war or war crimes depending on what
| exactly happened.
|
| There seems to be a trend of calling every terrifying
| event "terrorism." People sometimes colloquially refer to
| even non-political mass shootings as terrorism.
|
| I believe it's important to separate different types of
| mass violence. For example a gang-related mass shooting
| might be de-escalated by a mediator engaging the
| belligerents, whereas a war crime should be sent to
| international criminal court and a terrorist should be
| dealt with in a manner to minimize the earned media
| attention.
| [deleted]
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Do we have a word for "imperialist government uses
| violence against people to achieve political goals"?
|
| Yes, we call this "war".
|
| > Because "it's not terrorism because it's a state" is
| always gonna stink of trying to dodge the topic on a
| technicality.
|
| No, it's not. Nobody is trying to dogde the bad aspects
| of the word, it's just that terrorism specifically is, by
| definition, _not from a state_.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Saudi Arabia's decades long record of cultivating extremist
| outfits, and "influence operations" is, thought, not a
| conspiracy theory, but a fact.
|
| When I first seen 9/11 on TV as an 11 year old, I instantly
| thought that Ryadh will be turned into a crater within a
| few hours.
|
| I dropped my jaw out of suprise, when I heard US going to
| declare war on _Iraq_ -- Saudis ' biggest enemy. It made
| zero sense. I kept on watching the satellite TV at my
| neighbour's house, and _was hoping_ that it was my
| knowledge of English failing me. It didn 't.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >I dropped my jaw out of suprise, when I heard US going
| to declare war on Iraq -- Saudis' biggest enemy.
|
| You're being more than a little disingenuous ignoring the
| fact that we invaded Afghanistan specifically to go after
| the extremist group that was responsible for 9/11 about
| 2yr prior to invading Iraq, which was done for different
| reasons and "harboring terrorists" took a back seat to
| WMDs on that list of reasons.
| rswail wrote:
| The attack in Afghanistan was initially to attack Al
| Quada directly. It turned into a war against the Taliban
| when they refused to give him up. That went on for a year
| or so, but the drum beat of war against Iraq started on
| 9/12.
|
| There is a memo from Rumsfeld around then. [1]
|
| The fact that all the terrorists were Saudi, that Bin
| Laden was Saudi, that Iraq was an enemy of the Saud
| regime, that Iraq was a "buffer" between the rest of the
| Middle East and Iran, all of that was ignored.
|
| The war in Iraq was the US worst foreign affairs decision
| in the last 50 years.
|
| All of the "WMD" and then "bringing democracy" was
| retconning the original desire to finish the first Iraq
| war, which had nothing to do with 9/11.
|
| [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/plans-for-iraq-attack-
| began-on-...
| cycomanic wrote:
| That doesn't change his main point. Saudi Arabia was one
| of the primary financiers of the taliban and Al Qaida,
| but instead of going after the Saudis some of the only
| non military flights to be allowed to fly just after 9/11
| were private jets that flew Saudi Royal family members
| out of the country.
| finnh wrote:
| One of those is a conspiracy theory. The other isn't. WMD?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I was talking in the context of 9/11, not all the
| yellowcake stuff. IIRC the 9/11 commission report shows
| some evidence that intelligence was aware of a possible
| attack, but the administration didn't act. Some people
| took this to mean the intel was deliberately ignored,
| which is the part that seems conspiratorial.
| finnh wrote:
| Ah, that wasn't clear from your comment. Thanks.
| sjg007 wrote:
| These non-state actors are usually funded by a state
| though. So it is a type of proxy war.
| mindslight wrote:
| Rather than convenient conspiracy strawmen, how about "The
| military industrial surveillance complex was a main
| beneficiary of 9.11, and is symbiotic with the groups it
| purports to defend us against."
| ksm1717 wrote:
| "Conspiracy theory" has such intense negative connotation
| that "conspiracy" alone is corrupted
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Osama bin Laden did not care about our freedoms, he wanted
| the U.S. out of the Middle East and believed based on Somalia
| that dramatically attacking us would lead to that result.
| This is well documented.
|
| We have to be careful to not assign whatever motivation or
| outcome we don't like as "the goal of terrorism." You can
| justify anything that way, and people do. "If you do the
| thing I don't like, the terrorists win" can cut both ways.
|
| Terrorists have specific goals they are trying to achieve
| with violence, usually ideological or political or both. Bin
| Laden thought his ideology would have room to grow if he
| could scare the U.S. into leaving. He was wrong about that.
| The fact that we still have to take shoes off at the airport
| (annoying as it is) does not mean he won.
| peakaboo wrote:
| This is exactly what it's about. Humans constantly trading
| away more and more of their freedoms until we live inside a
| prison.
| goatlover wrote:
| But how does that advance the cause of terrorist
| organizations?
| javert wrote:
| > What are we doing this for?
|
| The "Homeland Security" apparatus is hungry and must grow.
|
| It's about jobs, power, and money for these bureaucrats.
|
| The "Homeland Security" apparatus is the most powerful
| political force in America, and is more dominant than either
| political party.
|
| Another term for this is the police-military-industrial
| complex.
| chakkepolja wrote:
| Police-military-industrial complex is bad. But the
| liberal_arts-journalism-clickbait complex overstates it.
| wpietri wrote:
| Is the primary goal of security at a college football game to
| stop a suicide bomber? I strongly doubt that's how they see it.
| q1w2 wrote:
| It worked in Paris a few years ago. Two suicide bombers were
| stopped at security and detonated their suicide vests - no
| other people were killed besides the terrorists.
| wpietri wrote:
| I agree it may also do that. My question is whether that's
| the goal of people inspecting bags at college sports.
|
| When I was in college, campus security already banned a
| range of items at sports games. In 1989, they made national
| news for adding marshmallows to the list of banned objects:
| https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/26/sports/michigan-to-ban-
| ma...
|
| That suggests to me that college stadium security is mainly
| about policing mundane behavior at college stadiums, and
| very little to do with terrorism.
| lexapro wrote:
| Yeah, isn't it to prevent hooligans from bringing weapons
| into the stadium?
| duxup wrote:
| That's not really a problem for college football, or really
| any sport in the US. For whatever reason the hooligan thing
| isn't a system in the US.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| alcohol more like
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Re: attacking outside security, radical Islamist terrorists did
| exactly that in the departures hall of Brussels Airport, 2016.
|
| They killed 17 people in a pair of suicide bombings there and
| injured many more, which were followed up by a similar attack
| on the Metro. There were enough cameras and coverage that the
| terrorists achieved their objective (publicity).
| r00fus wrote:
| There's a name for it: Security Theater [1]. "Security theater
| is the practice of taking security measures that are intended
| to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little
| or nothing to achieve it."
|
| Some have likened it to a jobs program that both increases the
| surveillance capability of the government as well as provides
| political creds for the representatives in those districts
| where airports exist, similar to the Military Industrial
| Complex.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater
| LanceH wrote:
| > What are we doing this for?
|
| At college football games this is all done to drive up the
| price of concessions.
| duxup wrote:
| I have my doubts that the cost of hiring that much security
| makes them much of anything. I didn't see anyone bringing
| picnics to the game ... at all even before the events.
| xscott wrote:
| I suspect it's not about protecting the people (your college
| stadium example), and that it is about protecting the expensive
| airplanes.
|
| If I'm being charitable, it might also be about protecting the
| buildings that planes can crash into.
| ridethebike wrote:
| Planes are not that expensive
| edgriebel wrote:
| Last time I checked even a relatively small 737 is ca. $100
| million. You must be related to Bezos if you don't consider
| that expensive.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| This is why I believe the TSA wasn't made to protect citizens
| it was only made to prevent airplanes from being used as
| projectiles against the government/military.
| dzonga wrote:
| just like the police doesn't exist to serve and protect the
| public. but to protect private property. it's all doublespeak
| as george orwell would've called it.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| > We have secure ID schemes that I believe most if not all of
| the 9/11 attackers would have qualified to get ...
|
| Secure ID is designed so people on various no fly lists won't
| be allowed to fly should they acquire a fake ID. How well this
| works in practice remains to be seen, but it's the theory at
| least.
| adoxyz wrote:
| I guess another reason for the security theater is to keep the
| powerful safe. If a bunch of random fans get hurt going to a
| concert or sporting event, it's nbd, but if someone "important"
| gets hurt it's a much bigger deal. Maybe a pessimistic view.
| aspaviento wrote:
| Maybe it's just for discouraging people from any attempt.
| duxup wrote:
| But in the college football game example, there's no
| discouragement right at the gates, no security, and they
| don't even bother with hitting an unsecured target at the
| same venue.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > It would be far more effective to do something at the gates
| dude to the density of humanity
|
| Maybe it is about shifting the blame. If something happens
| outside, it's the police failure but if something happens
| inside it is venue management failure.
|
| Anyway, I completely agree that we have given up way too much
| in the name of security. If it's not the terrorist, then it is
| "think of the children" scare and we are about to get our
| personal devices scanning our personal files and report us to
| the authorities. For now it is CSAM material but I don't see
| any reason why the same devices wouldn't be scanning for other
| stuff once the system is in place.
|
| I totally expect our devices to start checking on us for
| "betrayal" patterns once the conflict with China intensifies,
| for example. Once you become a "human resource" and nothing
| more in the eyes of the political structures, you will need to
| be managed and in 2020s the tools for it are plenty and
| powerful.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| The new thing is "think of grandma".
|
| Say delta variant enough and you can get anyone to give up
| anything.
|
| Post covid is like post 9/11. This is the new normal. Vaccine
| passports and all.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I got vaccinated to protect myself, not fan of natural
| immunity through suffocating. 2 days pain in the shoulder,
| 1 day of a mild fever and affectionate feelings towards
| Bill Gates is a great bargain.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Funny reddit quip you got there, but I'm talking about
| those who already have immunity, why should they risk the
| vaccine, even if small.
|
| https://openvaers.com/covid-data
| mrtksn wrote:
| I wouldn't know why those who already have immunity would
| get the vaccine. There are studies showing that a shot
| post Covid-19 greatly increases the immune response
| agains variants, so there could be reasons.
|
| In Europe getting the decease and beating it is
| considered good enough for immunity. Talk to your local
| authorities if you are not happy with your local
| practices.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| But only last for 6 months, hence the boosters. Natural
| immunity lasts longer.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| All immunity is natural; vaccines don't install a new
| immune system.
| mrtksn wrote:
| You can always chase people who sneeze on the
| streets(hang around a hospital maybe?), get your covid,
| test positive, quarantine yourself for 2 weeks and hope
| for the best as an immuniser or a natural booster.
|
| The vaccines on the other hand are much more practical
| and safer. They seem to lose some efficacy over time
| against getting covid but the results against getting
| seriously ill are very promising. Which probably means,
| if you get Covid-19 naturally later on, it would be a
| natural booster with much lower risk compared to a non-
| vaxxed person.
| duxup wrote:
| Thinking of other people and getting a vaccine and going on
| with your life without much of any impact seems like a very
| low bar.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Many reasons to not get a mRNA vaccine, natural immunity
| is one.
|
| Thinking that you need everyone to get a vaccine to live
| a normal life is a strange bar.
| duxup wrote:
| >Thinking that you need everyone to get a vaccine to live
| a normal life is a strange bar.
|
| I don't understand what that means.
|
| What happened to thinking of other people?
|
| When I think of getting a vaccine... I just do it as a
| part of normal life. It doesn't change my life at all,
| outside of added immunity.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| > When I think of getting a vaccine... I just do it as a
| part of normal life
|
| That's exactly my point. You aren't thinking, you're just
| following.
|
| > What happened to thinking of other people?
|
| My point as well. It's the same "think of the children"
| argument that was being discussed above.
|
| That itself is not a reason. People have immunity. The
| curve is flattened, the goal posts have been moved out of
| the stadium.
| zucked wrote:
| > The curve is flattened, the goal posts have been moved
| out of the stadium.
|
| How are you quantifying that? The original intent of
| flattening the curve was to avoid overwhelming the
| healthcare system and here we are... overwhelming the
| healthcare system(s) again. A quick check of capacity of
| ICU beds in the SE USA shows that on average, hospitals
| are running 92% capacity(1). Obviously you want right-
| sized ICU capacity, but I doubt 92% is a comfortable
| margin.
|
| (1)https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-
| hospitals-...
| hunterb123 wrote:
| You would need to know the normal margin and the % that
| covid patients are taking for that to be significant.
| [deleted]
| duxup wrote:
| What does any of that mean?
|
| You're talking about "aren't thinking" but most of your
| posts just involve nebulous throw away phrases like
| "People have immunity"... clearly you know that phrase
| doesn't mean anything right?
|
| In the meantime we can all see for ourselves actual
| impact, real things, in areas where vaccination rates are
| low. These aren't nebulous concepts like your phrases,
| they're real.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Real things? Please point to the real things.
|
| Case numbers! Case numbers! Hospital rates are NEARLY at
| capacity!!!!
|
| Yeah that has been said over and over. Things are fine.
|
| Go outside of the city, noone respects this stuff and
| hasn't the whole time, noone is dying more than usual.
|
| Worry about cars and obesity if you want to make a
| difference.
| duxup wrote:
| Are you saying "Case numbers! Case numbers! Hospital
| rates are NEARLY at capacity!!!!" isn't real?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| :/
|
| just because rural folks don't care the hospital is full
| doesn't mean the hospital isn't full
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Not at all what I said. The hospital isn't full. Show me
| a single hospital that is OVER or AT capacity.
|
| All the fear mongering articles say is the ICU is at 90%~
|
| They are always around that number. Show me the
| percentage of covid patients in that ICU. Show me the
| normal number of the ICU.
|
| Worry about obesity if you want to stop the number one
| and two killers of humans and relieve our healthcare
| system.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Can you just go to r/nursing and read the 100x stories of
| nurses saying "I'm actually not an ICU nurse but my floor
| has been converted to an ICU floor" or "We have 4 nurses
| for 30 covid patients and I want to scream"?
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Anecdotes on Reddit. Great source.
|
| Don't believe anything you read on Reddit, especially
| anecdotes.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Maybe go to your local hospital and ask then among their
| own nursing social circles? They're the people who would
| have first-hand understanding of how full the ICUs are.
|
| I'm not saying I believe everything I read on Reddit, but
| I know r/nursing is a longtime subreddit of mostly
| medical people and has a history of being as such for a
| long time. If I wanted to know what the actual medical
| field is dealing with day to day, I think a community
| with a history of being where healthcare people talk
| about what they're dealing with day to day is a pretty
| good bet.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| I have been to the hospital 3 times already and it's
| fine. My sister is a nurse and she hasn't had a covid
| patient in over a month.
|
| I guess Reddit only gets one type of anecdote. I doubt
| the other side gets voted up and probably even removed.
| jjeaff wrote:
| What are the reasons not to get a vaccine? I haven't seen
| any real data that indicated that.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Waiting to see the long term effects of a mRNA vaccine?
|
| Natural immunity as I mentioned before.
|
| Religious reasons.
|
| Just because. You don't need a reason, it's your body.
| recursive wrote:
| I don't understand "natural immunity" as a reason. I
| think I don't know what it actually means.
|
| As far as I know, natural immunity is conferred if and
| only if you've recovered from the virus. And one of the
| goals of the vaccine is to avoid getting it in the first
| place. But to get natural immunity, you have to be
| infected first. It seems a bit like burning down your
| house to prevent arson from a stranger. Have I
| misunderstood "natural immunity"?
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Likewise, yelling at people to get the vaccine makes no
| sense.
|
| If you don't want to catch the virus, get the vaccine.
| Don't worry about others.
|
| They will get the virus and then get natural immunity.
| People will have adverse reactions to both covid and the
| vaccine. Let them weigh the risk to which one.
| kristjansson wrote:
| > They will get the virus and then get natural immunity
|
| Only if they, y'know, survive, and only after being a
| nuisance to the healthcare system that the rest of rely
| on
|
| You've got a point that verifiable natural immunity as of
| _now_ should probably be acceptable in lieu of
| vaccination (though efficacy against variants is worth
| considering) for mandates.
|
| Offering 'natural immunity' as an option to the currently
| un-vaccinated un-infected population is just crazy.
| People will assume the risk, get sick, got to hospital,
| and die. Just ignoring those 'others' isn't an option for
| public-health since the downside costs of the risk they
| assume are borne by everyone in the form of healthcare
| burden. 'They' still expect to be a priority when they
| get sick...
| recursive wrote:
| Thanks for the advice, but that's already exactly what
| I'm doing.
|
| One downside of this though, is that ICU beds are full.
| I'll also hope I don't need one. I very rarely have
| before, so I'll probably be ok.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > You don't need a reason, it's your body.
|
| The reason is to help protect and care for your fellow
| human beings.
|
| "It's your body" only counts if what you're doing with it
| isn't putting unconsenting others at risk. Forgoing the
| vaccine without a solid medical reason is putting others
| at risk.
|
| By your logic, you should be able to punch anyone in the
| face at any time, because your fist is part of your body,
| and "it's your body".
| hunterb123 wrote:
| > "It's your body" only counts if what you're doing with
| it isn't putting unconsenting others at risk.
|
| Not according to pro-abortion stances.
|
| If you want to get the vaccine, it should protect you. If
| you can't there are therapeutics. You don't need to force
| others to inject mRNA shots into them.
|
| Your analogy was awful. Such a false equivalency, there's
| nothing even remotely the same about that example.
| JohnFen wrote:
| What's wrong with my analogy?
|
| The point of vaccines is to help protect society at
| large, not so much you specifically. Failing to take
| reasonable steps that help keep your friends and
| neighbors safe is simply reprehensible.
| godshatter wrote:
| I'm fully vaccinated, but that was a choice I made. It
| was a risk assessment. "How likely am I to get covid and
| have a bad go of it?" vs "How likely am I to have a bad
| reaction from the vaccine?" That's a risk assessment that
| varies from person to person based on where they live,
| what medical conditions they might have, their age, and
| other things.
|
| The mRNA vaccines are especially worrisome to some
| because they are relatively new and aren't fully approved
| in the US (where I live).
|
| I have a co-morbidity and by the time I was eligible to
| get vaccinated it looked obvious to me that I'd be better
| off getting it based on how well they were performing and
| how low the risk appeared. Things could have turned out
| wildly different with vaccines that turned out to be both
| mostly ineffective and potentially dangerous, causing me
| to assess things differently.
|
| I encourage my friends who aren't vaccinated to get
| jabbed, but I have no wish to have the government force
| them to get a medical procedure they specifically don't
| want.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Except now I'm supposed to show a digital vaccine record
| many places I go. Not many open source options exist for
| reading them either, so I'm just supposed to trust that
| the data (name, birth date, maybe location) isn't being
| sent to some marketing analytics company somewhere.
|
| Edit: Since some HN commenters want to play disingenuous
| games and insert words into my mouth, I'll clarify my
| specific problem is with these apps having zero
| standards. If my state makes its own app or devises a law
| to prosecute this kind of use of private data, I would
| have less of a problem with it as a temporary measure.
| void_mint wrote:
| > Except now I'm supposed to show a digital vaccine
| record many places I go. Not many open source options
| exist for reading them either, so I'm just supposed to
| trust that the data (name, birth date, maybe location)
| isn't being sent to some marketing analytics company
| somewhere.
|
| If you think vaccine passports are bad just wait until
| you hear about all phones...
| isoskeles wrote:
| Sorry bud, I can turn off my phone. I can leave my phone
| at home. My phone carrier doesn't sell my location, they
| just give it to the police if I commit a murder.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I don't really see what this has to do with vaccine
| passports (Louisana has a nice app for it, digital
| drivers license, proof of vaccination checked against a
| state database) but phone carriers do sell real-time
| location data to third parties. They were fined a
| pittance for it: https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2020/02/fcc-issues-wrist...
| void_mint wrote:
| Sorry bud, you can avoid events that require vaccine
| passports. You can move to deeply conservative states
| that share your views.
|
| Tell me again how it's different.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Oh I bet you use that same dipshit logic when discussing
| homeless people being told to move somewhere cheaper.
| void_mint wrote:
| > Oh I bet you use that same dipshit logic
|
| This amount of disrespect is unwarranted.
|
| > when discussing homeless people being told to move
| somewhere cheaper.
|
| What an absolutely insane whataboutism. This has nothing
| to do with what we're discussing and you look like a
| joke. You're asserting that vaccine passports infringe
| upon your freedoms. Just don't go to those bars. Jesus.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Play the victim after telling me to pack up my life and
| move states. Fuck off.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| What if the city like NY ordered ALL bars to stop you for
| your papers.
|
| Now you can't go to any bars. That hurts minorities the
| most as they are the most unvaccinated.
|
| Its new world segregation essentially.
|
| But yes those people could just pick up and move, and
| many are. Look at the numbers.
|
| Unfortunately many cannot because they aren't on a SWE
| salary.
| void_mint wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/08/9850
| 327...
|
| It's not new.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Okay? What's your point? So was slavery.
|
| The point is it violates rights now.
|
| SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS!
|
| (you guys are the nazis)
| void_mint wrote:
| What rights? Businesses have the right to refuse service.
| Governments have always required vaccine verification.
| This is just whining. There are no rights implications
| here.
|
| Also calling me a nazi isn't really appropriate, I don't
| think.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Is it though if the government is forcing businesses to
| check it?
|
| If you're okay with forcing people to show their medical
| history to drink, I think you can handle a word being
| thrown at you. Nazi.
| void_mint wrote:
| > If you're okay with forcing people to show their
| medical history to drink,
|
| This is the obvious troll. You're not forced to show
| anything _to drink_. You're forced to comply with a
| business's requirements as per their rights, to be
| allowed to drink _in their establishment_.
|
| Also please go back to reddit if you cannot resist the
| urge to call names.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| when I got my first vaccine, they gave me a paper card,
| and they put stickers on it to record which vaccines I
| got, and I put it in my wallet where it's been ever
| since. I haven't (yet, I guess) had to show a "digital
| vaccine record", I just show my paper card and they stare
| at it for a bit and then wave me through.
|
| if you did not get that option, that sucks, and it sounds
| a bit inconvenient, but, uh, yeah, over 600,000 people in
| the US have died so far, i don't think that's a "scare",
| that sounds like a valid concern to me.
|
| also your data is almost assuredly at 20 different
| marketing analytics firms already, regardless of how
| secure or open-source the digital vaccine record is.
| isoskeles wrote:
| You don't know where my data is. And regardless, that
| doesn't mean I'm supposed to be okay with another vector
| that I cannot opt out of for potentially selling my data.
| boldlybold wrote:
| Funny how HN is so willing to agree with the absurdity of
| security theater at airports, yet so resistant to calling
| out the pandemic theater we're living every day.
| void_mint wrote:
| > Funny how HN is so willing to agree with the absurdity
| of security theater at airports, yet so resistant to
| calling out the pandemic theater we're living every day.
|
| Take a peek at a hospital if you have some time.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The existence of the pandemic is a very observable and
| testable. The ways to combat the pandemic are also well
| known and tested.
|
| How a person can deny the existence of something that can
| test it personally?
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Yeah lockdowns were super well tested and worked wonders
| /s
|
| No, they cratered the middle class while making the rich
| richer.
|
| Now they know not to lock down to destroy the economy but
| instead push to destroy personal freedoms.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Talk to your local lockdown provider if you are not happy
| with the results.
|
| Done properly, of course a lockdown would be effective.
| Why? Because of the Germ theory. The viruses exist and
| they don't teleport.
|
| If anything, I would have much preferred if we had a
| month of global lockdown instead of years of slow burn
| battle. We wouldn't have had to convince people for
| vaccination too. It worked for Wuhan.
| modzu wrote:
| do you know what would happen if everybody on earth gave
| themselves 6 feet of space from each other for 14 days?
| the same thing that would happen if you teleported the
| virus to the moon. why didnt anyone think of that!
| hunterb123 wrote:
| No, locking down for an indoor virus is stupid.
|
| Vitamin D and open air works, not lock downs.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I am all in for spreading the population sparsely under
| the sun for a month(I'll take the Greece beaches or the
| French Riviera). We can make the immunes ones prepare the
| food and bring the beer.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Well that's a large swing in the other direction, but I
| enjoy the hyperbole. You do realize lockdowns are the far
| other direction though? Do you see my point why lockdowns
| were bad?
|
| Allowing and encouraging people to go outside is the
| happy medium.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The idea is to separate people from each other for long
| enough for the virus to die off. Could be done in many
| ways. Accommodating people in small separate groups for a
| month under the sun has it's practicality issues but if
| someone can pull it off the results would be exactly the
| same.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| That idea is stupid when the high density areas live in
| multi-family housing.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The last state lockdown orders expired in June 2020. Most
| lasted on the order of a few weeks.
|
| The economy is not destroyed. Assets are appreciating,
| GDP is growing faster than it has in a decade and
| employers are desperate to find workers. The unemployment
| rate is near 5%.
|
| If there is a weak spot in the economy, it is that rising
| case numbers of the Delta variant are causing people to
| _voluntarily_ limit their in-person activities. When you
| ask business leaders what can help the economy, they say
| "more people getting vaccinated" because it's the fastest
| way to reduce new COVID cases.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| When I ask small business leaders that they say to stop
| paying people to stay home.
|
| I said middle class. Small business was destroyed. The
| corporations got richer.
|
| How does your neighborhood look? All businesses still
| intact?
|
| Not talking about the stock market.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| In my neighborhood several small businesses are still
| intact. The businesses that relied primarily on commuters
| are gone, but the staples catering to the people who live
| here are still intact. My favorite local bar, coffee
| shop, drycleaner, and bookstores are still going. I'm a
| bit sad about my pho place closing down, but they're a
| small chain, and they have another one a bit further away
| from me that I can still go to.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| > No, they cratered the middle class while making the
| rich richer.
|
| Isn't this economic policy, not lockdown policy? Any
| government could decide to pay laborers 100% of their
| salary to stay out of work. They could decide "essential
| workers" would be paid on top of their salary as
| compensation for the risk and danger. They could deice
| that corporate profit during a shutdown would go to
| support laborers. Lockdowns only hurt the middle class
| and help the rich because the government chooses to force
| the middle class to stay home while not forcing the rich
| to stop profiteering off it.
| ziml77 wrote:
| The lockdowns didn't work because people pushed back
| against them causing the measures to be half-assed as a
| way to appease those people.
|
| This happens all the time in politics and it's
| infuriating.
|
| You can't judge the effectiveness of a plan if the plan
| is modified as a shitty compromise or just plain ignored.
| But people do judge them, which makes those compromises
| an effective form of sabotage.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I live in a pretty liberal area, so I assume we are
| taking stronger measures than your average area, and I
| have to say that nothing surrounding any covid
| precautions even approaches what it takes to get on a
| flight. Wear a mask indoors? Get the jab that most people
| wanted anyway? I'm just not seeing this Orwellian
| oppression that some people seem to be suffering under
| right now.
|
| NYC is the most strict, but they are also the most
| densely populated. Beyond that, I just don't feel like
| I've given up any rights.
|
| Can't say the same about a shoeless, invasive patdown
| where a stranger runs their hand down your butt crack
| after having waited in line for an hour and gone through
| a nude scanner.
| modzu wrote:
| your comment sounds like what someone who doesnt fly
| might have said after 9/11. its not hard to think of some
| examples that apply to the covid security theatre. for
| example, there are fundamental freedoms, like the freedom
| of movement, that turn out not to be so fundamental after
| all. safety first.
| SergeAx wrote:
| I live in Moscow, Russia, and there was a brief time when
| I was stripped of rights to enter a restaurant, cafe,
| gym, theater, concert or sports venue. There was talking
| about requirement of vaccination to use public transit
| and even a taxi.
|
| Fortunately, those restrictions were cancelled after 3
| weeks, because you know, voting day is coming and we
| don't need angry citizens to vote against ruling party.
| But the infrastructure is there and it may be used again
| any time now.
| aeternum wrote:
| It's not the same. Covid is clearly causing a significant
| increase in mortality. Even if you don't believe the
| covid-reporting numbers, you can simply look at excess
| deaths.
|
| It's very difficult to falsify death stats on a mass-
| scale especially in a country like the US.
| modzu wrote:
| when the towers fell, nobody got hurt? the threats are
| legitimate, but its fair to be critical of the response.
| aeternum wrote:
| the threats are legitimate and every death counts but it
| also makes sense to prioritize and focus our limited
| attention to areas where it has the most impact.
|
| Terrorism kills something like 28k/year whereas Covid has
| killed 5 million.
| umvi wrote:
| The majority of the ~5 million that covid killed would
| have been dead of old age, heart disease, etc. in 5-10
| years anyway. Covid just shaved off a few years of life
| expectancy; the same people would have shown up in CDC
| death counts as heart disease or natural causes
| statistics a few years later. With the 28k killed by
| terrorism, not so much. You have a lot more young and
| healthy dying with decades of life expectancy remaining.
|
| Same with comparing covid deaths to WWI deaths. On the
| one hand you have thousands of healthy 18-year-olds
| dying, and on the other you have thousands of elderly,
| obese, and sickly people dying. Not quite a fair
| comparison.
| aeternum wrote:
| We'll see, it's a falsifiable prediction, which is good,
| but we won't really know until we get the excess death
| numbers for the next 5-10 years.
|
| Even in the 25-44yr age range, we see a pretty
| significant increase in deaths: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/
| volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm#F2_down
| jfrankamp wrote:
| Both have theater aspects and let me propose something:
| that's good.
|
| When you approach airport security (theater) you wonder
| what their capabilities are _today_. Are they sniffing
| the air at large with their GCMS? Is there going to be a
| dog today? Its intimidating to think of it as a
| theoretical attacker because of its large and
| multifaceted apparatus, which is part of its deterrent
| power.
|
| Masks are somewhat similar, they have a vanishingly small
| chance of actually intercepting a virus particle/droplet
| that was going to infect you on a case by case basis BUT
| they make people approach you differently. They say
| "stand back".
| SergeAx wrote:
| When you approaching airport or train station security
| theater, you slowing down due to limited throughput. And
| then bang! - a terrorist blows up in the crowd right in
| front of security gate.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2013_Volgograd_b
| omb...
| mrtksn wrote:
| Actually they did a study on the masks and proved
| effective.
|
| It was done by picking a population of 350K, then
| separating them to test and control groups, encourage
| mask for the test group.
|
| The results are that at 39% mask use in the test group
| the covid cases were %12 lower than the control group.
|
| There was also a difference between surgical mask(%12)
| and cloth mask(%9) use.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/Jabaluck/status/14330369334003056
| 73/phot...
| jfrankamp wrote:
| No actually required :-). I didn't say masks were not
| effective, I said part of their effectiveness is the
| making-conscious of transmission vectors. E.g. when you
| wear a mask and see others do it you are more likely to
| wash your hands or stand back.
|
| When you wear a mask (as I do) in addition to blocking
| some particles you signal to others "lets play the not
| kill eachother game by limiting virus vectors!"
| mrtksn wrote:
| Fair enough:) They should also made some of the test
| ground really chill to see if it is the mask or the
| attitude!
| duxup wrote:
| Probably because we can't see much evidence of airport
| security doing anything.
|
| And vaccines and etc are backed by science?
| biomcgary wrote:
| Know of any randomized controlled trials on airport
| security?
| duxup wrote:
| It would be nice if they would do that.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| There absolutely are red-team exercises against airport
| security. Sometimes the TSA has fared very poorly[0]. In
| the face of decreased air travel during this pandemic
| their "catch rate" has gotten better[1].
|
| [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-
| breaches-...
|
| [1]
| https://www.npr.org/2021/01/26/960872502/2020-firearm-
| catch-...
| ryguytilidie wrote:
| Wow, I think I found the most disingenuous person on hacker
| news.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| I speak my mind, unlike the echo chamber here. That's the
| opposite of disingenuous.
|
| Others have agreed with me, they either get greyed out or
| flagged. Even in this thread, look below.
|
| I'm sorry the majority follows blindly and can't see the
| similarities between the loss of freedom after 9/11 and
| covid.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Comparing the patriot act to mask mandates would be
| hilarious if it wasn't such a damning indictment of
| current discourse.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You've already posted 22 times in this discussion,
| including COVID denial and downplaying, hyperbole about
| "freedom loss", labeling someone a Nazi, sea-lioning for
| hospital stats, and spreading vaccine FUD. What are you
| trying to accomplish? Have you ever stepped back from the
| keyboard for a brief moment, reflected on why everything
| you post is grayed out, and come to a conclusion that
| doesn't involve groupthink and a massive conspiratorial
| campaign against "the truth"?
| spoonjim wrote:
| That security isn't necessarily to stop terrorism. It's also to
| stop people from bringing in weapons and then using them in
| drunken brawls.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is amazing reasoning. Assuming drunken brawls were a
| problem, instead of banning alcohol, the solution was the
| current TSA protocol.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Alcohol makes money, outside weapons don't. If they could
| get away with selling you knives in the stadium they
| probably would.
| Grazester wrote:
| Too much money in alcohol to ban it. Due to the behaviour
| of people on planes now, some airline have temporarily
| stopped serving it but passengers could still get it at a
| bar at the airport or buy a bottle of alcohol at a duty
| free store and drink themselves stupid before boarding the
| plane.
|
| I dont think they can easily ban that.
|
| edit:// OP clarified this was meant for sports games.
| duxup wrote:
| >using them in drunken brawls.
|
| That's not a thing at games I've been to.
|
| Lots of drunken folks, but fights are exceptionally rare.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Most airline passengers would trade dry flights for pre-9/11
| security screenings.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Most airline passengers can already trade $85 every five
| years for pre-9/11 security screenings. They simply choose
| not to.
| spamizbad wrote:
| it gets expensive and annoying if you're traveling with
| your family.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Most of the time (100% for me so far) you just have to
| have pre-check for whomever is buying the tickets. As
| long as they're all on the same reservation ID, the pre-
| check will get applied to the entire group. That's how I
| got my first taste of pre-check, when my sister-in-law
| bought tickets for our entire family. I ended up buying
| it for myself, and now my wife & kids get the stamp as
| well when we're traveling together.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Oh nice. I did not know that!
| jaywalk wrote:
| They'll tell you it's not guaranteed (and it's
| technically not even guaranteed that you'll get PreCheck
| even if you've got PreCheck yourself) but I've also had a
| 100% success rate with buying tickets and having PreCheck
| applied to all of them.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I'm talking about college football games.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Instantly. Where do I sign?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-
| programs/global-...
|
| https://www.tsa.gov/precheck
|
| https://www.clearme.com/
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have global entry & precheck (ironically, global entry
| is often slower than just using their app when you
| arrive). It's nice, for sure, but it's not pre-9/11
| security. It's close, I guess, for just the traveller.
| But I miss the days when family could come to the gate.
| Maybe airports are too busy for that anyway, now, but I
| can dream.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > But I miss the days when family could come to the gate.
| Maybe airports are too busy for that anyway, now, but I
| can dream.
|
| I kinda miss it too, and it's a bit of a shock seeing it
| happen in old movies now, but I already struggle to find
| seating at the gate. Even if the security concerns went
| away entirely in a magical world, I'd bet this
| restriction would stay.
| irrational wrote:
| But, that wasn't even a problem pre-2001. Do you not remember
| what things were like pre 9/11?
| lexapro wrote:
| Not wearing a seat belt was also not a problem pre-1984.
| irrational wrote:
| Tell me about it. I got to lay on top of the families
| suitcases in the back of the station wagon on road trips.
| It's so much easier to sleep like that.
| lexapro wrote:
| Yes, until you die in an accident that you could have
| survived with a seat belt.
| irrational wrote:
| Which is exactly why my everyone in my car wears their
| seat belts. But that doesn't change the fact that it was
| easier to sleep when laying down in the back of the
| station wagon.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I think what he's mentioning has nothing to do with 9/11
| though, right? He's talking about football hooligans. I
| only know that there are such scenes in soccer here in
| Europe and it can get pretty rough when they clash.
| yaris wrote:
| "If someone did want to do something at such a sporting event,
| nothing is stopping them from doing it at the gates" - this has
| already happened in Russia (Volgograd, 2013). A suicide bomber
| blowed himself up in front of a security gate at the main train
| station. Between 37 and 50 injured, 16 dead as the result.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| And at the Brussels Airport in 2016, in the check-in hall
| prior to security.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I like those checks though. It won't stop a guy trying to do a
| mass killing. It will stop a guy prone to getting drunk and
| casually carrying a gun who might be fine cheating the system
| if they're not checking, but not if they are checking.
| bradstewart wrote:
| I'll agree that most stadium security seems to be mostly
| theatre, but people are definitely not more spread out once
| inside the stadium. At least not at any large stadium I've ever
| been in which at least a dozen entrances with people going in
| over the course of several hours.
| usrusr wrote:
| > If someone did want to do something at such a sporting event,
| nothing is stopping them from doing it at the gates where there
| is a reliable and unsecured mass of humanity
|
| Theres a mass of people, but few cameras. Much worse
| cost/benefit ratio in terms of whatever craziness terrorists
| would supposedly consider benefit.
|
| (feel free to spend the rest of your day thinking up silly
| wordplay involving "bang for the buck", I wish you were alone
| in this if you do)
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > What are we doing this for?
|
| No longer high on the list of priorities for politicians, so
| insufficient benefit for risking being seen as the politician
| that wants to make life easier (regardless that this is not
| true) for terrorists.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I try not to fly and this is one of the major reasons I find
| flying so annoying. I've been through airports where they just
| use bomb sniffing dogs, why can't that be the norm?
| murgindrag wrote:
| Allergies.
|
| You end up with a large segment of the population who sneezes a
| little bit, which is sort of annoying but sort of okay.
|
| You end up with a small segment of the population with asthma
| attacks, anaphylaxis, and other life-threatening conditions.
|
| Universal use of dogs would mean that there would be people who
| simple cannot travel, ever, anywhere beyond driving distance.
|
| There's a small war between extremist dog-owners (the ones who
| believe dogs are people too, and sneak them into all sorts of
| places dogs aren't allowed as "activism") and people with
| severe allergies.
| sidlls wrote:
| I have never heard of any life-threatening allergic reaction
| to any drug or bomb sniffing dog. Has that actually happened?
| If so...how, when, and where?
| woofie11 wrote:
| Asthma attacks are not uncommon in response to dog dander.
| Those can be life-threatening, but can be managed with
| albuterol. 30 seconds with Google will turn up countless
| documented instances.
|
| Anaphylaxis is a very rare response to animal dander, but
| there have been a few documented instances:
|
| https://www.petful.com/misc/can-pet-allergies-kill-me/
|
| What's amazing is the number of dog owners who don't
| believe in dog allergies, or who believe their dogs are
| hypoallergenic due to fur/hair (dander is in the saliva).
| sidlls wrote:
| Countless documented instances of asthma induced by the
| dander of drug/bomb sniffing dogs or just dogs in
| general? I have asthma and have occasionally reacted to
| animal dander--but never in an airport or other location
| due to service animals.
| woofie11 wrote:
| I don't think there is a database of allergic reactions
| people have had. They just happen and people move on. If
| the question is narrow enough, e.g., "Has there ever been
| anaphylaxis in response to a dog named Woofers jumping on
| a 12-year-old girl in New York's Central Park?" the
| answer will be "No."
|
| However, there have been plenty of instances of severe
| asthmatic reactions to dogs in situations in all relevant
| respects similar to drug/bomb-sniffing animals. And I've
| seen plenty of allergic reactions to service animals.
|
| People react to different amounts of allergens. For some,
| it requires direct contact. For others, it's enough to be
| in vaguely the same room.
|
| Service animals are tougher, since both sides have a
| disability and medical need. Police dogs should be
| easier, if not for police generally being power-hungry
| thugs.
| yunohn wrote:
| > dogs are hypoallergenic due to fur/hair (dander is in
| the saliva)
|
| I've read the same explanation for cats. But, I find it
| hard to believe. Pets are constantly licking their fur,
| and shedding said fur all over the place. It's very clear
| to me that more fur = higher chances of allergic
| reactions.
|
| What am I missing?
| dopamean wrote:
| There's no chance that people with pet allergies are the
| reason bomb sniffing dogs aren't more widely used.
| kleiba wrote:
| In most airports outside the US you go through the security
| checks without having to take your shoes off.
| nemo44x wrote:
| It's a supply issue from what I've read. Most bomb sniffing
| dogs are sourced from overseas and there's a high demand for
| them globally. There simply aren't enough dogs that are
| capable. Even from a litter, there's a chance none of them will
| qualify after training, much like legit service dogs. We also
| use a lot of dogs to sniff for drugs.
| dzdt wrote:
| For drug-sniffing dogs, generally all that is needed or
| expected is the dog will indicate where and when its handler
| wants an indication. For bomb-sniffing dogs you are hoping
| for a more precise outcome which is much harder to train for
| and achieve.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/05/suprem
| e-c...
| aww_dang wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
|
| >The ADE 651 is a fake bomb detector[1] produced by the
| British company Advanced Tactical Security & Communications
| Ltd (ATSC). Its manufacturer claimed it could detect bombs,
| guns, ammunition, and more from kilometers away. However,
| it was a scam, and the device was little more than a
| dowsing rod. The device was sold for up to US$60,000 each,
| despite costing almost nothing to produce.
| wffurr wrote:
| "We use a lot of dogs to let cops search and seize whatever
| they want." FTFY
|
| https://reason.com/video/2014/09/16/dog/
|
| https://reason.com/2021/05/13/the-police-dog-who-cried-
| drugs...
| [deleted]
| aww_dang wrote:
| If you liked expanded government powers necessitated by the War
| on Terror, you're going to love the new biosecurity state.
| Remember, it is for your own safety!
|
| >"I don't see it changing," said Lora Ries, a senior research
| fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think
| tank. "It never seems to be fewer requirements ... the direction
| always seems to be for more."
|
| >Security screening, he said, will also be expanded to passenger
| drop-off points and airport and off-airport parking lots, in
| addition to walkways and tunnels approaching departure and ticket
| kiosks.
| nemo44x wrote:
| >Security screening, he said, will also be expanded to
| passenger drop-off points and airport and off-airport parking
| lots, in addition to walkways and tunnels approaching departure
| and ticket kiosks.
|
| That's the protocol in Israel. The airport is fairly isolated
| and before you can even get on the entry road your car is
| pulled over. Outside the airport entrance there are dogs and
| officers and then you go through security before you even get
| to baggage drop off and then another security for some
| questioning, etc. You are deemed suspicious if you don't arrive
| a few hours before your flight. Any drinks you buy after
| security are taken away as your carry on baggage is looked at
| one more time before you board. I often buy a couple liters of
| water before long trips and the to have them taken away (and
| probably put back on the shelves and sold!) before boarding was
| a bit annoying.
| throwaway20371 wrote:
| I would be happy to have more potential terrorist attacks if it
| meant less hassle at the airport. Even if every airport in the US
| got bombed once a year, it would still be 20,000 less deaths per
| year in the US than happen by automobile.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| https://archive.is/GLV2R
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I flew out of LAX last month and they had us keep our shoes on.
| stoolpigeon wrote:
| The US is the only place I think I've had to remove shoes for
| flight security in years. But in Europe taking off a belt is
| often required while in the US it is not. In Budapest they
| stopped having us remove laptops from bags a bit ago. My biggest
| challenge over the years was remembering what to do in each place
| as the security people at the airports had a tendency to get
| upset if you didn't do it their preferred way.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| There is an impatience mismatch between the average traveler
| and airport security.
|
| Flying out of Philly Airport, the TSA yelled at everyone to
| take off their belt and shoes, shaking their head in disbelief
| at people that didn't know the rules, wasting everyone's time.
|
| A few months later, same airport, new rules, now the TSA yelled
| at people taking off their belts and shoes because that's not a
| rule, shaking their head at people wasting everyone's time.
|
| When you work at any job you tend toward assuming all people
| are as knowledgeable about the 'obvious' things, it is a tough
| skill to remain empathetic. I fly maybe 3 times a year. A
| security agent will process a few thousand people a shift. We
| are each bringing a different patience threshold to the
| interaction.
| elwell wrote:
| I flew out of philly recently and witnessed an older
| gentleman in a wheelchair and an ID checker playing tug-of-
| war with plane ticket amidst yelling.
| chucksta wrote:
| The Philly airport employees are some of the least hospitable
| I've encountered traveling, especially their TSA. They come
| off as actively hostile about everything
| svachalek wrote:
| Interesting, I have not spent a whole lot of time in
| Philadelphia but that describes my experience everywhere
| there, seemed like everyone is always angry and impatient
| with me before I even start to interact. (Kind of like the
| NYC stereotype, which I encounter only rarely when I visit
| NYC.) But TSA in general is tough to deal with, I fly once
| sometimes twice in a year and the rules are different every
| time but they're shocked and appalled I'm not up to date.
| zactato wrote:
| Yeah I think this is more of a Philly thing than a TSA
| thing.
| chucksta wrote:
| Agreed. I was going to add that,but didn't want to be
| flippant. Although I still think the airport is
| particularly bad
| emkoemko wrote:
| yup travelling to the US from Canada just to see a comedy
| show i needed to tell them how much money i have in my bank
| account and what i do and how much i make... what on
| earth... they couldn't understand why i would only stay one
| night...
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| That's just how people talk in Philly.
| dsomers wrote:
| Counterpoint, I was once asked to take off my shoes in Germany.
| I can't remember if it was Frankfurt or Munich -- probably
| Frankfurt. That was just because I was randomly selected for
| more screening. All of the other times flying through those
| airports shoes were left on :-)
| belkinpower wrote:
| > My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to
| do in each place as the security people at the airports had a
| tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way.
|
| For as much as I complain about security theater and think
| they're mostly useless, this is genuinely my biggest issue with
| TSA. It's wildly inconsistent, there's insufficient signage,
| and they act like you're an idiot if you haven't correctly
| guessed what today's rules are.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| Two weeks ago in San Diego, the security line forked into two
| conveyor belt lines. I walked past the first option (the
| second had a shorter line), and as I did, the guy stationed
| there was loudly shouting to the whole line that all
| electronic devices bigger than a cell phone must be removed
| from bags. I proceeded to the second line, where I got
| scolded for taking my laptop out of my bag. I gestured to the
| other guy and said "he told us all electronic items bigger
| than a cell phone should be removed." The response? "That's
| that line, this is this line."
|
| This is my biggest complaint too. The entire idiotic process
| would be a lot more efficient if they just had consistent
| expectations and a consistent process so we could all just
| comply without having to clarify things or being told we're
| doing it wrong.
|
| Also, could they please give us a reasonable place to move
| our stuff to while we put our shoes on so we're not holding
| up the line?
| gruturo wrote:
| The belt thing is supposedly because metal buckles will trigger
| the metal detector... but they insist I take off mine even
| though I bought one with a plastic buckle on purpose. So yeah,
| it now became "a rule" which is followed without much
| reasoning.
| ziml77 wrote:
| It's a rule because it makes it easier to keep things
| flowing. You don't have to trust that the person is right
| about their belt not being able to set off the metal
| detector.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Same reason we take our shoes off in Europe, plastic shoes?
| no problem, but god forbid boots with metallic straps for the
| laces.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Taking belt off because it trip off the metal detector.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Then there's remembering airports (and flight patterns) that do
| "one-stop-security" and which don't.
|
| London Heathrow doesn't. They re-screen all incoming
| international passengers, so that 500mL bottle of contact lens
| solution that the ultra-paranoid Americans allow me to carry-on
| gets seized by Heathrow when transiting there.
|
| I'd think if the UK disagrees with another country's rules,
| they should just ban flights from there.
|
| If it's safe enough for me to fly in with, it should be safe
| enough for me to fly out with.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| The airport staff must be making millions from all the
| leftover deodorant alone.
|
| I just take it all in stride and try to remain Zen when I'm
| flying thinking about a hot shower and a beer at the hotel.
| 101008 wrote:
| I always though taking off a belt it was bcause if not the
| metal sensor would trigger, so to avoid it, they just ask to
| remove your belt in case it contains metal?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| In Canada that's the case. But small belts can go through. So
| it depends on the security guard what exactly they ask you to
| do. I had purposefully bought a small belt that would not
| trigger alarm when I flew weekly pre-covid for years. No joy
| : Half the security guards told me to take it off as a
| precaution when I tried to go through, half would get upset
| I'm taking my small belt and delaying everyone - sometimes
| there's no winning, just say "yes sir/ma'am" to whatever they
| ask that particular day :-/
| Tenoke wrote:
| It is. I don't take off my belts with no metal parts in
| Europe and it's been fine. Once they even asked me and I said
| 'no metal' so they didn't press.
| mekoka wrote:
| I've had to take my shoes off in a few other places, including
| in Ethiopia and a few places in S.E. Asia. But I confirm that
| the US takes things to a level beyond anything anywhere I've
| been, with some airports being worst than others. Nowadays when
| I buy plane tickets, I usually try to avoid any transit through
| LGA or JFK.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| "My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to do
| in each place as the security people at the airports had a
| tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way."
|
| It can differ from airport to airport. I traveled from Ottawa
| to Toronto often enough for it to be mindless but differences
| between two national airports in same province of same country
| on same airline still caught me if I went too much on
| autopilot.
|
| And then I'd fly to Halifax and all my instincts went out the
| window :).
|
| Sometimes it'd differ shift to shift. Agents would get mad at
| me for taking or not taking tablet from my bag. Mentioning
| "your colleague instructed me otherwise, can you kindly confirm
| the rule so I can comply in future" only gets you marked as
| belligerent - the power trip is definitely there :-/
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Just ask in French.
|
| Then they'll most likely bring you to the only employee
| that's not a contractor.
| mayneack wrote:
| It also differs within airports. I flew in LAX a week ago and
| one of the non-precheck lines only took off shoes, but left
| liquids and laptops in bags and did a generic metal detector.
| They didn't even randomly assign people to lines, it was
| apparently early enough for me to choose to use that line
| since it was obviously moving faster.
| fouc wrote:
| I'd stick with the more conservative measure, taking the
| tablet out all the time, even if it might not have been
| required. Also I wouldn't bother verbally responding if they
| ask me to do something, I'd just do it and keep my lips
| sealed.
| lexapro wrote:
| A simple "okay" followed by compliance also works.
| gregmac wrote:
| I've been yelled at for taking out things besides a laptop,
| including a tablet with a keyboard case.
|
| I'm not even clear what the issue was; it was just a
| general "don't take your tablet out!!" as if it was an
| obvious rule that anyone with common-sense would
| understand, and clearly I was a fool the agent had no time
| for.
| anchpop wrote:
| When I was flying back from Tampa, a TSA agent told me I had
| to take out my phone and put it through the scanner. I kept
| telling him I didn't have a phone on me, but he didn't
| believe me and asked me the same question about three more
| times. I was surprised he didn't search me haha. Not a big
| deal or anything, just thought it was funny
| xur17 wrote:
| > My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to
| do in each place as the security people at the airports had a
| tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way.
|
| Exactly this. I'm sure to the security people, it feels obvious
| since it's what they do every day for hours consistently, but I
| agree that the inconsistency is very frustrating.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Hands behind your back Hands up Keep your hands where i can
| see them .....etc
| scanny wrote:
| Had to do it (removing shoes) yesterday going from Amsterdam to
| Edinburgh. Seems less common but it happens still.
| fma wrote:
| Sometimes I get the magic "Pre-check" and I'd forget I don't
| need to take the laptop off, for example.
|
| I just try to look ahead and see what others are doing.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Pre-check screening is the EZPass of the security state.
| Exchange your privacy for convenience. Submit to a background
| probe and permanent residence in a government database (and
| god knows what other consents are required) and you, too, can
| join the upper tier of society. Leave the filthy plebes and
| their shoeless drudgery and pat-downs behind you as you
| ascend into the clear air of the Verified(TM) elite. You pose
| no threat, quite the opposite! You support and serve the
| power structure. Welcome aboard!
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Aside from the interview, the government already has all
| the background check data in their databases already. It's
| not like you're applying for a security clearance where
| agents go around your friends, family and neighbors digging
| up undocumented dirt.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Do you know for a fact that your background screening
| does not now or will not ever include calling out to a
| social media extremist detection service? I'm not so
| confident.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I'm also not confident in that. But again, if someone has
| put me in an "extremist detection" database I'm already
| in the database and the government could already query
| it.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Would you like to be subject to Twitter's or Facebook's
| interpretation of extremist?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| why would the government care if i'm banned from twitter?
| ctrlp wrote:
| Why would the government care to have you banned from
| Twitter?
| xxpor wrote:
| The TSA gets all the info they'd need to do that when you
| buy a ticket. Precheck or not.
| nrclark wrote:
| Don't forget that it also costs money.
|
| Nothing like a government-sponsored system to make life
| visibly better for those who can afford it. And - since it
| siphons line-space and machines - harder for everybody
| else.
|
| Sometimes I think that pre-check, toll-roads, and their ilk
| will take us all to the guillotine if we keep it up long
| enough.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| At least in Kansas, the toll roads are _not_ using tax
| money, so that 's better than a government-funded TSA
| wanting more cash from you to make your life easier.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Ugh, you mean that stretch of the Turnpike on 70 that
| forces you to pay a toll for travel between Topeka and
| Kansas City? Not exactly an optional tollroad if you're
| driving across the country on 70, and you can tell
| they're not using a lot of the money to maintain the
| roads...
| timr wrote:
| It's increasingly not even that convenient. The last half-
| dozen times I've traveled, "PreCheck" turned into me going
| through the regular security line, carrying a card which
| they ignored.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| How does that even happen? I have pre-check, and it's
| always been an entirely separate line. They'd have to do
| a fair amount of work to redirect you over to the
| 'regular' line.
| timr wrote:
| It used to happen only at smaller airports that didn't
| have the capacity to handle extra lines. But lately, I've
| had it happen at bit airports (like ATL), so I'm not
| really sure.
|
| The answer to your (implicit?) question is that it
| doesn't work. The staff take the card from you at the
| start of the process, and once your bag is in the
| machine, they have no idea if it's yours. So far, every
| time this has happened, I"ve been singled out for
| _additional_ security.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| So after you already start the x-ray process, they take
| you aside and make you do the shoes, belt, and the rest?
|
| If I sound confused, it's because I am :). I don't get a
| pre-check card, it just shows up as a notation on my
| boarding pass. I scan it just like normal, then shove my
| phone into my backpack and toss it on the belt. No
| removing my shoes, belt, etc.
|
| They also won't touch my bag, and I have to be the one to
| push it onto the feed belt of the scanner. They have to
| have a pretty good idea that it belongs to me.
|
| Coincidentally, I just travelled through ATL a few weeks
| ago. It's never as smooth as my home airport (PDX)
| because it's a much busier airport, but I don't recall
| anything out of the ordinary happening.
| vinay427 wrote:
| > I don't get a pre-check card, it just shows up as a
| notation on my boarding pass.
|
| (Not the person you replied to.)
|
| These are different things. It has nothing to do with you
| or your eligibility, but the specific time and place.
|
| If you're eligible for PreCheck and have it printed on
| your boarding pass, at some airports and security lines
| that don't have a PreCheck lane open, you're given a
| laminated card that the first agent tells you will accord
| some of the PreCheck benefits. As with the OP, these
| didn't always work in practice in my experience.
|
| The PreCheck line can temporarily be closed in a larger
| airport that would normally have one, or this may be a
| more permanent process in a smaller airport that might
| not have the space.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Interesting. I have never run into that. Thanks for the
| information.
| rosseloh wrote:
| My local airport is so small that they don't process
| security until half an hour before boarding. We have one
| "gate", and the planes we get can hold 50 people when
| full.
|
| I have Precheck (always marked on the boarding pass and I
| assume it shows up on their screen when I scan it), and
| what happens is the person at the podium notes it and
| lets his colleagues down the line know. I get a card, and
| show it to the person handling the body scanner, at which
| point they send me through the metal detector instead.
| There isn't much difference when it comes to the bag
| scanning (if any).
| angott wrote:
| In Europe you're not required to take off your belt because of
| an arbitrary rule like shoes in the US. They just tell you to
| take it off because most belts have metal parts so they will
| likely trigger the metal detector.
| dsauerbrun wrote:
| I thought the shoes being taken off wasn't arbitrary. I
| thought it was because of the shoe bomber(Richard Reed)
| asveikau wrote:
| > the shoe bomber(Richard Reed)
|
| Hmm, haven't heard that name in a while. I remember all the
| crazy press about him.
|
| Fascinating details in his Wikipedia article -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid :
|
| > The explosive apparently did not detonate due to the
| delay in the departure of Reid's flight. The rainy weather,
| along with Reid's foot perspiration, caused the fuse to be
| too damp to ignite.
|
| Seems his biography was that of a petty criminal whose
| journey to radicalism began in prison. Pretty sad to think
| about. One considers an alternate reality in which he would
| have been rehabilitated beforehand instead. Seems like he
| might have had some serious problems, though.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The fact that the shoe rule does not apply to precheck
| speaks volumes about how arbitrary it is...
| curryst wrote:
| It's arbitrary because all they do is X-ray them. X-rays
| can't tell you whether there are explosives in the shoe,
| all you can do is look for signs the shoe has been altered.
|
| I don't think that requirement would have stopped Richard
| Reid. Maybe someone notices that his shoes look a little
| odd under the X-ray, but with sports shoes coming with
| weird air pockets and Heelys existing, it's not _that_ odd.
|
| It also slows down people moving through, making the
| security line a bigger target, and forces people to sit
| down just past security to put their shoes back on. Again,
| making the security line a much larger target.
|
| We'd be better off just forcing everyone to do the hand
| swabs. One airport I went through had some kind of machine
| that purportedly could detect trace explosives coming off
| your clothing or skin. Those would be way better, if they
| work.
| lexapro wrote:
| >We'd be better off just forcing everyone to do the hand
| swabs.
|
| That or detection dogs.
| vkou wrote:
| > We'd be better off just forcing everyone to do the hand
| swabs. One airport I went through had some kind of
| machine that purportedly could detect trace explosives
| coming off your clothing or skin. Those would be way
| better, if they work.
|
| I've gone through that machine _six_ times, in one trip.
|
| Something in my backpack set it off, so they kept running
| swabs over and over again until the light went green.
|
| It was an utter waste of time for everyone involved. The
| fools patted me down five times, looked through all my
| things, ran them through the x-ray machines, and can
| clearly see that all I have is the clothes on my back, a
| laptop, and two changes of clothes. But they won't let me
| through the security line until their magical explosive
| scanning oracle shows a green light.
|
| As if anything about the risk I pose to a flight
| fundamentally changed between the first swab and search,
| and the sixth.
|
| The best part is they were asking me what is causing it
| to go off. Why are you asking me? I don't know a god-
| damned thing about your magical black box.
| aliswe wrote:
| I saw a documentary on border controls in afghanistan where they
| used a pretty ingenious idea. they frisk a guy and check his
| pulse at the same time. so a guy holds two fingers to the guys
| jugular vein, and the other one checks him. any increase in pulse
| and its an indicator they should keep searching.
| gelotar wrote:
| So if some heavily armed stranger touches your neck and that
| makes you nervous, you're probably guilty of something?
| spraveenitpro wrote:
| There was an underwear bomber though.
| fnord77 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
| Diederich wrote:
| I flew a number of times post 9/11 and accidentally brought a
| pocket knife with me in my carry on backpack several times.
|
| It's all quite silly.
| michaelfeathers wrote:
| This is a lesson in incentives. The reason any of these
| procedures are not eradicated is that no one wants to be the
| person who does that and then have the next terrorist attack use
| a technique that would've been caught.
|
| It's interesting to note that we have had this in software
| development too. Prior to CI/CD, organizations that had QA
| departments (responsible for testing) had a lot of incentive to
| hold up releases because they were blamed if a bug escaped into
| production. When developers test, they are responsible for both
| delivery and defects so there is balance.
|
| It's hard to see how something like this could be applied for
| security. Making the TSA responsible for wait times seems like a
| good idea but there's always going to be an asymmetry when life
| hangs in the balance.
|
| After the IRA bombings, train platforms didn't have trash bins
| for decades. Eventually some showed up with transparent bags so
| that the contents could be seen. The half-life of fear is long.
| ggalaxximm wrote:
| The half-life of fear is long.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I'd be willing to wear see-through shoes at the airport, if
| that's what you're suggesting.
| yesdownvoteme wrote:
| The level of political commentary here is anemic, most likely
| from the heavy handed censorship employed by both moderators and
| users.
|
| TSA isn't about security or safety, it's about control and power.
|
| But the ability for anyone on HN to even begin this conversation
| is basically impossible.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Totally unrelated, but I still remember what I did on 9/11. I was
| in my teens. I know the date, I know the weekday, I know
| everything I did in the 24 hours it happened.
|
| However, despite being the much "fresher" events, I don't know
| the weekday my grandparents and parents passed away, let alone
| what I did back then.
|
| My memory is... interesting.
| macintux wrote:
| Memory in general is very capricious, but world-changing,
| emotional events tend to do that. Before 9/11 the most common
| one I heard people talking about was JFK's assassination.
|
| For me, it's the Challenger disaster, 9/11, Columbia.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Yes.. Thinking about it, before 9/11 I had the TV pictures of
| the Berlin Wall being torn down by an excavator in my mind.
| But I was way too young at this age to understand it.
| conductr wrote:
| I'm a bit older and have experienced a handful of 9/11-like
| events [0]. They always stand out more vividly as a shared
| global/national experience whereas things like family members
| passing is highly localized to your family. You could easily
| escape the mourning by talking to friends/coworkers/etc that
| had no idea your family member passed and the conversation
| would give you a sense of normalcy. During/following 9/11,
| there was nobody to talk to that wasn't thinking about the
| events that just occurred. It consumed the nation for a fair
| bit of time.
|
| [0] Challenger, OKC, 9/11, even the first WTC attacks and
| princess Diana & OJ fit this category in terms of memory
| imprinting. I'm too young for JFK, but that was a big one too.
| My uncle says he can remember everyone being very sad and glued
| to the TV, he was 3.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Yeah... Thinking about it, I remember my mum watching the
| funeral for Lady Diana back in 1997.
|
| > _It consumed the nation for a fair bit of time._
|
| Now I'm European, and I remember that our teachers back in
| school spend the whole day explaining what happened, and
| maybe why. (It was late afternoon here, when the attacks
| started, so I'm talking about the next day). But everyone was
| in disbelief, and also afraid of the response.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Don't get me started.
|
| - 9/11 was a one-time thing, it only worked because the
| passengers would assume that as long as they cooperate they would
| get out alive. Without that "cooperation" 9/11 would have not
| happened (remember the 4th plane that was brought down because
| the passengers learned what happened)
|
| - Liquids. There was the _potential_ that someone could mix
| together some liquids to make an explosive. It never actually
| happened, and the possibility was solidly debunked later. Yet,
| our lotion is still taken from us... And dumped right in the
| garbage near the most populous location in an airport.
|
| - Shoes. One failed attempt. One. Years, later we still need to
| take our shoes off.
|
| It's a security theater. Some of it obviously necessary, some of
| it just to make us feel safe.
|
| Meanwhile _way_ more people die on their drive to the airport
| than from any flight related incidents.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Shoes off, masks on. In perpetuity.
| 99mans wrote:
| Mask up. Vax up. Shut up. This is what they want.
| option wrote:
| "those willing to give up a little bit of freedom to gain a
| little bit of security deserve neither and will soon lose both"
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| When I was last traveling, the person in front of me asked TSA
| agent "Why do we have to take our shoes off?" He replied, "Have
| you heard of the shoe bomber?"
|
| When I think about it, that's a crazy policy to have since it
| only happened once (and it didn't even work).
|
| If we follow that sort of logic we should be wearing masks every
| time we fly. It's just a bizarre policy.
| danans wrote:
| > If we follow that sort of logic we should be wearing masks
| every time we fly.
|
| We do wear masks every time we fly nowadays. Or maybe that was
| your point?
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| Sorry. Forever. We had an incident once, and we now have to
| follow guidelines to that incident forever. Wearing masks now
| is appropriate.
| ewagsjr wrote:
| I mean you can do TSA PreCheck and then only 10% of the time you
| have to take your shoes off.
| kureikain wrote:
| How do you manage to not losing your laptop, especially when
| traveling with kids?
|
| They lost mine once and I basically have to found it myself.
| Eventually found someone throw the bag in an corner...
| rwmj wrote:
| I lost my _passport_ between security and the gate once (the
| security staff inexplicably moved it into a new tray, so when I
| picked up my stuff from my two trays I missed the passport in
| the third tray). Losing your passport at this point turns out
| to be very complicated, but I was lucky that they held up the
| whole plane while I ran back to security to fetch it.
| GhostVII wrote:
| We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people
| die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and
| how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths.
| We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is
| OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a
| tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high
| speed limits that kill thousands of people per year. Not that I'm
| advocating for lower speed limits, just that there is a
| contradiction here.
|
| I bet that if instead of having people go through security at
| sporting events, you had them all do 20 push ups, you'd save more
| people from dying of heart disease than would die of terrorism.
| teawrecks wrote:
| This is close. A comparison of causes of death vs how much time
| the news spends focusing on each one:
| https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die...
| tintor wrote:
| Tracking how many people die from different causes is easy.
| Difficulty is tracking how many lives were saved with specific
| preventive measure.
| [deleted]
| mherdeg wrote:
| My gut feeling is that if you look at these data they'll tell
| you "most people should focus on eating well and getting good
| amounts of exercise." They might also tell you "kids should
| learn water safety skills and comply with car seat safety rules
| scrupulously".
|
| It's hazy now but I remember doing some back-of-the-envelope
| math in April 2020 to compare risk of death via SARS-CoV-2
| infection vs. other causes. I think what I remember seeing was
| that if you're age 80+ getting COVID is similar to driving 10
| million road miles in the US (NHTSA: 1.5 deaths per 100 million
| road miles; COVID: 15% mortality for infection in ages 80+). I
| think I remember being totally unable to evaluate the risk to a
| kid but maybe COVID infection is similar to driving 3000 road
| miles? (per upper bound at https://fullfact.org/health/bbc-
| children-covid-risk/). This mostly told me that driving was
| very risky.
|
| Problems with comparing road miles to disease infection:
|
| (1) being infected also means you're infectious; dying in a car
| crash doesn't spread exponentially to others
|
| (2) I do not know how to reason about the long-term side
| effects of COVID on quality adjusted life years
|
| > I bet that if instead of having people go through security at
| sporting events, you had them all do 20 push ups, you'd save
| more people from dying of heart disease than would die of
| terrorism.
|
| I do a qualitative analysis of this every couple of years:
| should I bike to work?
|
| (1) Cardiovascular fitness improves from exercise
|
| (2) You might get hit by a car and die (worrying about this
| adds stress even if you don't experience it).
| DSingularity wrote:
| Queue the "only so few die because we spend so much" response.
| _h_a_n_o_ wrote:
| There's a fine but substantial difference: Terrorism is murder.
|
| Comparing murder to accidences or to fate in case of deathly
| diseases is inappropriate.
| pacman2 wrote:
| 20 years after 9/11, BinLaden still takes money out of your
| pocket (Airport security, air marshals etc.).
| danans wrote:
| 20 years later, the commodity that both financed and
| motivated 9/11 style terrorism and religious radicalization
| in the middle east and beyond - petroleum - still does that.
| It's also the same industry that provides a lot of revenue
| for the international arms industry.
|
| But we didn't really want to stomach the lifestyle changes
| that shifting off of petroleum as a fuel would require, so
| instead we went decided to bomb societies out of supporting
| terrorism and into democracy.
|
| Even if one doesn't believe climate change is real, that's a
| pretty good reason to avoid burning petroleum to move around
| by driving EVs and taking public transit.
| lonelyPM wrote:
| Well said... I feel like someone out there has developed a
| dashboard like this.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| We are pretty good at death counts, it's easy. All the data
| is there. Tied to anonymised health condition as aggregates.
|
| The problem is how do we even start to evaluate the cost of
| prevention. Measures? We have equipment and labour costs,
| that's easy to measure but the data is not made available.
| But then what is the opportunity cost on those who are
| inflicted the measures. A person goes on holiday and can
| perhaps browse a book while queuing for an hour to go through
| the security checks, a business traveller is simply standing
| there, unable to even make a phone call due to lack of
| privacy.
|
| Also, if we spend 1 trillion usd on say the prevention of
| terrorism, and we "only" suffered 20 death in the United
| States during that period, it doesn't mean halving the
| expense would only double the death toll. We put measures and
| have no tool to measure their effect, high number of
| variables, and each of their weight evolve dynamically.
|
| I think we better spend time educating the media industry to
| somewhat control the increasing rate of fear inducing columns
| published each second. And if they don't learn, regulate them
| since we are already regulating countless industries for that
| matter.
| jlg23 wrote:
| We could just start with people dying from starvation or wars
| globally. My guts tell me, if we can reduce this number, we
| will reduce the number of terrorist attacks as well.
| MrCybertooth wrote:
| Count of total death is just a 'metric' and something that can
| be 'optimised' and done 'cost benefit analysis' upon, unless it
| is your child or family member who is the casualty. I would
| like to understand how okay anybody would be when told that
| their daughter died because the government felt it was a waste
| of money to prevent it.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is the core of my problem with utilitarian metrics like
| this, as they rely on quantifying the unquantifiable.
|
| What is truly scary about it, though, are the people who are
| certain they _can_ quantify those things, and convince others
| of it, too.
| kobasa wrote:
| Big difference between labeling it a "waste of money" to
| having to prioritize whilst being constrained to a limited
| budget. I mean there's no words that will console a parent
| that lost their daughter anyways, not really a metric that
| should determine policy.
| serjester wrote:
| Those are risks that are stable from year to year. Deaths from
| terrorism, COVID and small wars are defined by power laws where
| they can quickly spiral out of control. You could argue people
| intuitively understand this and overreact in an attempt to get
| them under "control".
|
| If traffics deaths varied by many magnitudes year to year you'd
| likely see a similar over reactions. I'm not saying I agree
| with this approach but it's not as simple as people make it out
| to be.
| moogly wrote:
| Whilst I think airport security is indeed just security
| theater, roll my eyes every time I have to take my shoes off at
| an airport, and I disagree with some of the claims in this
| article that these things work and have kept us safe, I'm not
| sure that's a great idea.
|
| I can only speak for myself, but I'm not a fan of cost-benefit
| analyses when it comes to human lives. Going down that route
| gives us such wonderful things like corporations preferring to
| pay out damages instead of making product recalls (c.f. the
| Ford Pinto case). It gets quite cynical. But I guess in the
| minority here. All my "tech bros" think like that too. It's all
| about cold, hard statistics.
|
| There is something to be said about "Vision Zero[1]" type
| projects, but as it stands I don't think the TSA is currently
| engaging in a deliberate such project.
|
| [1]: https://wikiless.org/wiki/Vision_zero
| Metacelsus wrote:
| >I'm not a fan of cost-benefit analyses when it comes to
| human lives
|
| What about when you measure the costs as lives vs. lives?
| E.g. spending X dollars on airport security saves Y lives,
| but spent on highway safety saves Z lives.
| moogly wrote:
| As someone else wrote in this thread, there's absolutely no
| way to know how many were saved from potential harm, so
| that's a useless contradistinction.
| andrewfong wrote:
| We sort of have this in the concept of a micromort:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
| barathr wrote:
| This was studied before, and the results are amazing -- it's
| 266th ranked in terms of disability adjusted life years:
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11127-018-0590-...
|
| > If terrorism were a disease, injury, or mental disorder, its
| DALY would rank in the bottom decile of the 291 diseases and
| injuries included in the Global Burden of Disease (Murray et
| al. 2012). Specifically, in Table 7 it is shown that terrorism
| would rank 266th, i.e., in the bottom 9%. Relative to the
| diseases that plague mankind, terrorism has limited
| consequences.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Death is not the only societal cost, and the study above only
| looked at first-order numbers of deaths.
|
| Additionally, it's difficult to measure the cost of in-action
| when responding to an erratic phenomenon like terrorism.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Actually we are but actuaries aren't, maybe politicians should
| start using some actuarial expertise rather than jumping from
| one supposed crisis to the next to get votes. People,
| especially mobs, are ruled far more by fear than by facts.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I get $100 from my health insurer for getting flu shots, I
| imagine similar incentives are coming for covid vaccines.
| 2021 premiums were set before vaccines came out, so maybe
| they have had time to price it in by now.
| poorjohnmacafee wrote:
| While true, I'm not sure if you're suggesting that the war on
| terror and its intrusions in our domestic lives have to do with
| risk assessment? Don't think I have to say it out loud but it's
| about literal trillions of dollars that have flowed to MIC,
| expanded bureaucracy, surveillance, gov contractors, natural
| resource industries, foreign allies, and a whole lot more that
| could be noted.
| babyshake wrote:
| I've definitely considered this regarding COVID. It seems
| commonplace where I live that many people feel it is
| irresponsible to not wear a mask when doing something like
| hiking on an almost empty nature trail, but will drive
| recklessly on the highway without a second thought.
| corey_moncure wrote:
| The CDC collects these statistics. You would find, for
| instance, that more black people die each year from falling out
| of bed than they do at the hands of cops while unarmed
| (Unironically, provably true; look it up before you downvote...
| ideally no innocent person would die during police
| interactions). Clearly, whatever motivates policy and politics
| has no resemblance to a proportional risk-based assessment.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| I went ahead and looked it up. According to google, in the US
| 650 die falling out of bed per year[1], while about 1000 are
| killed by police, about 20-25% of those police victims being
| black (while the US black population is around 14%).[2]
|
| Falling deaths are quite common among the elderly. Police
| shootings, not so much.
| https://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-
| de...
| hunterb123 wrote:
| He said unarmed people. Those 1000 are mostly all armed.
|
| There were 14 unarmed black victims and 25 unarmed white
| victims in 2019.
|
| The number of unarmed black shooting victims is down 63%
| from 2015, when the database began.
|
| The 14 unarmed victims in fatal police shootings would
| comprise only 0.2% of black homicides.
|
| https://www.manhattan-institute.org/police-black-killings-
| ho...
| poetaster wrote:
| An engineer friend, at VW, told me more people fall to their
| deaths from ladders than die on the autobahn. In DE, of
| course. He's one of those engineerz that evaluates the moral
| consequences of the companies processes, writ large. And you
| need an engineer for moral calculus. Sadly, this is still new
| territory for large companies.
| poetaster wrote:
| Oh, and I alsi think this is a poor analogy. Mine is better
| (ducks).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There is no purpose in comparing those two things as one is
| self inflicted whereas the other is involves a second party's
| actions.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| The other problem overlooked in this analogy is that the
| killings are the most extreme _symptom_ of a tyrannical
| police force that terrorizes (black) American citizens at
| an incredibly high rate, from harassment to physical abuse.
| Protests against the police are using killings as an
| example of the problem, not the complete summary.
|
| And, to be clear, the police treat white Americans very
| poorly as well. It's just that they somehow manage to treat
| black Americans even worse.
| [deleted]
| andrewfong wrote:
| There's a dynamic aspect to this that's difficult to capture in
| terms of straight up mortality risk.
|
| For starters, we're more interested in the marginal average
| reduction of mortality per dollar invested rather than point in
| time risk. Like, the risk of flying on airplanes is fairly low
| relative to driving. But that's, in part, because we've already
| invested a huge amount into making air travel safe. It might
| not make sense to funnel future dollars into making air travel
| safe as opposed to cars. But if we were to lower that
| investment going forward, mortality would presumably go up.
| Because people aren't that irrational: Zooming through the air
| a mile in the sky, absent safety precautions, really is
| inherently less safe than driving on the ground.
|
| That's extra true for something like security, where you're
| dealing with responsive opponents. The odds of a plane blowing
| up in a terrorist attack are low, but if the bad guys had a
| 100% successful method for blowing up a plane, they'd probably
| take it and the odds would go up.
|
| Plus the odds also vary quite a bit based on the denominator
| too. For instance, the odds of death by flying are lower over
| the last X years. But if you were looking only at mortality
| risk from flying on the 737 Max in 2019, maybe that's
| different.
|
| And then there's the non-mortality cost. Eating healthier food
| would reduce mortality quite a bit. But people like eating
| unhealthy things -- at some point, the extra life gained isn't
| worth it.
|
| None of this is to say that the current degree of security
| theatre is worth it. Only that relative mortality is probably
| insufficient a measure.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| An entire 9-11 load of deaths in car accidents occurs EVERY
| MONTH ever since. The disproportionate response shows up the
| fraud of the War on Terror, Patriot Act and things like TSA
| SOPs at airports.
|
| You can compare it to any other cause of death or even merely
| injury.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| This is actually a logical fallacy. Heart disease, accidents
| etc: They happen. Terrorism: Someone wants them to happen. Big
| difference, think about it.
| poetaster wrote:
| Does coke want kid's to become obese?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| People are just fine at evaluating risk. It's just that the
| prioritization of the population is different than the
| prioritization of HN/Reddit/whatever. "People" aren't bad at
| stuff. On average, they're about average at it, which is
| tautologically true.
|
| People don't wanna die in a car crash or from covid but they
| want to die at the hands of others even less.
| edanm wrote:
| > "People" aren't bad at stuff. On average, they're about
| average at it, which is tautologically true.
|
| That is absolutely not true, at least not in the way anyone
| means.
|
| Humans are "terrible" at remembering numbers. The average-
| ability human has average ability, obviously, that is
| tautological. But as a whole, humans are _not_ good at
| remembering numbers.
|
| A reasonable question is, what does "good" even mean? Well
| that depends on context. We are worse at remember numbers
| than computers are. We are worse at remember numbers than the
| same human, but with pen and paper. We are worse than some
| animals.
|
| Obviously, there is no objective "good" or "bad". We are
| better than some animals, etc.
|
| But when someone says that humans are terrible at evaluating
| risk, they usually imply that we are bad at it as compared to
| risk evaluation done with real calculations, and that is
| internally consistent. And that is something that IS somewhat
| objective, and most humans fail as compared to this objective
| standard (e.g., lots of contradictions in risk decisions).
| xeromal wrote:
| I think you missed the point of the post you're replying
| to.
|
| >People don't wanna die in a car crash or from covid but
| they want to die at the hands of others even less.
| edanm wrote:
| No, I was replying to the specific sentence I quoted.
|
| I actually agree with the spirit of the post, it's just
| that one thing that bothered me.
| shoulderfake wrote:
| High speed limits are killing people? Are you ok man? Look at
| germany and their death tolls on highways compared to america.
| Alupis wrote:
| > We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many
| people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID,
| etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent
| these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for
| some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top
| security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths
|
| The "preventing a single death is worth it" crowd has
| unfortunately been running the show since 9/11.
|
| This crowd has largely driven the COVID response as well -
| which went well past "flatten the curve" and turned into "stop
| all deaths no matter the cost", ignoring all externalities and
| consequences along the way.
| gorwell wrote:
| It's bizarrely myopic. It not only ignores any cost benefit
| analysis, but also larger preventable causes of death and
| poor health outcomes. Obesity being the proverbial elephant
| in the room.
| poetaster wrote:
| Exactly. I really gotta stoo typing now....
| umvi wrote:
| > We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many
| people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID,
| etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent
| these deaths
|
| It would be a highly controversial dashboard, I guarantee it,
| likely unpopular with both political parties.
|
| The problem is that assuaging fear is often more important (to
| irrational people) than saving lives.
|
| For example, guns. _Very_ few people die because of mass
| shootings. Your chances of dying in a mass shooting are
| virtually nil. Yet, every time one happens there 's a big
| frenzy to enact anti-gun policies. So you have all this talk of
| "bump stocks" and "ghost guns" and "assault weapons" and
| whatnot, but it's all just smoke and mirrors to assuage fears.
| The goal isn't to save lives. The goal is to assuage fears. I
| don't take any gun policy seriously that purports to save lives
| if it isn't focused on handguns and suicides.
| [deleted]
| andrewfong wrote:
| It's not entirely unreasonable to regulate on the basis of
| psychic impact over straight up mortality.
|
| Not saying our focus on mass shootings over suicide
| necessarily makes sense, but the collective trauma of 20 kids
| dying in a school shooting is arguably higher than the
| equivalent number of deaths by suicides.
| myohmy wrote:
| Be careful with that reasoning. Its illegal for the CDC to
| study gun violence as a public health measure. If that
| happened it might rank on child mortality rates.
| flyingfences wrote:
| It is not, and never has been, illegal for the CDC to study
| gun violence. One specific part of their budget that had
| been earmarked for those studies was reallocated once.
| That's the extent of the so-called "ban" that the
| politicians keep harping on about.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| That re-allocation did happen, but it also came with
| wording that effectively barred from doing any research
| until a recent change to the law:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment
| th0ma5 wrote:
| Yes police shoot and kill more people that mass shootings.
| But also covid has killed more police than people have.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > So you have all this talk of "bump stocks" and "ghost guns"
| and "assault weapons" and whatnot, but it's all just smoke
| and mirrors to assuage fears. The goal isn't to save lives.
| The goal is to assuage fears. I don't take any gun policy
| seriously that purports to save lives if it isn't focused on
| handguns and suicides.
|
| It's also politics. If you actually wanted to solve the
| problem, well, like two thirds of US firearms fatalities are
| suicides. So a real solution is going to look like "improve
| mental health" and not "restrict who can buy a gun" or else
| you're only going to be diverting people to other methods of
| suicide, or keeping people "alive" but still in such a
| precarious mental state that the only thing preventing them
| from taking their own life is access to an effective means.
| Neither of which is actually acceptable.
|
| But from a political perspective, proposing useless gun
| restrictions makes the other team have to spend political
| capital to oppose them, because even if they're completely
| ineffective at their stated purpose, they upset or
| inconvenience the other team's constituents. Which seems to
| be the goal of modern US politics.
| godelski wrote:
| > suicides
|
| While I agree with the message I don't think this will sell
| well. Many people do not even have the faintest idea of
| what depression is like and understand it as an illness. So
| they see it as a personal choice and therefore not a thing
| for the government to solve. Similar to drugs. This is of
| course despite the connections to environmental causes and
| government regulations. You greatly decrease rates of
| depression and drug usage, which are highly correlated, by
| the same thing. Making life better and less stressful. That
| even helps non-depressed and non-drug users.
|
| Despite that, I think we should just talk about other types
| of gun violence. The vast majority of which involve hand
| guns. Which if you understand this, makes the national
| conversation seem extremely odd.
|
| I'd encourage everyone to watch Sapolsky's lecture on
| Depression[0].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc
|
| [0^] My running hypothesis is that the since we have a new
| fiasco every other day that it causes over stimulation
| (like a stress response) and causes socio-motor retardation
| (analogous to psychomotor retardation)
| baix777 wrote:
| It is interesting to compare US vs Canadian suicide rates
| to see what impact gun ownership could have.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journa
| l...
| falcrist wrote:
| While I agree with the idea that removing a quick and
| accessible means of suicide can reduce suicide rates,
| there's a _huge_ caveat on that article.
|
| > we did not have the ability to control for differences
| between the two countries including poverty,
| unemployment, health systems, cultural, or other
| differences
|
| The authors go on to suggest that they may in fact be
| _underestimating_ the amount of suicides that could be
| averted with reduced gun ownership, but there are an
| awful lot of confounding factors that are simply not
| addressed in this paper.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > improve mental health
|
| I think that this is a poor target. How do you set out
| directly targeting mental health? What are the biggest
| causes of mental health issues?
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm
|
| CDC lists causes such as childhood trauma, trauma from
| medical issues, biological factors, alcohol or drugs, and
| loneliness or isolation.
|
| How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation? How
| do you help prevent alcohol or drug addiction? What are the
| reasons that people become addicted to drugs or alcohol?
|
| > Use and misuse of alcohol, nicotine, and illicit drugs,
| and misuse of prescription drugs cost Americans more than
| $700 billion a year in increased health care costs, crime,
| and lost productivity.
|
| https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-
| behavior...
|
| > Some must cope with the early loss of a parent, violence,
| or sexual abuse. While not everyone who faces these
| stresses develops a mood disorder -- in fact, most do not
| -- stress plays an important role in depression.
|
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-causes-
| dep...
|
| This is a big interconnected problem. My point is that just
| giving directly to mental health resources rings hollow. A
| tougher holistic approach needs to examine why American
| society just plain sucks for so many people. Why do people
| want to kill themselves or others? Why does life suck so
| much for so many? We have a rotten system and drug
| addiction/gun violence/suicide are symptoms and not causes.
|
| My 2 rambling cents.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > just giving directly to mental health resources rings
| hollow. A tougher holistic approach needs to examine why
| American society just plain sucks for so many people
|
| I don't think they are mutually exclusive, mental health
| can incorporate a systems approach. It seems patently
| foolish to ignore lifestyle factors like diet, exercise,
| sleep or social factors like friends, family, religion &
| other communal institutions.
| lolwut9654 wrote:
| Have you tried doing more than nothing?
|
| On many occasions in the past, I've found that doing
| anything often works better than doing nothing, like the
| US usually advocates.
|
| Turns out that there are no perfect solutions, but there
| are a lot of partial solutions that in aggregate add up
| to the mental health the rest of the developed world has.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Thank you for making an account to attack a point that I
| did not make.
|
| I did not say to do nothing. I said it will probably take
| a holistic approach. Holistic means look at the issue as
| a whole rather than trying to attack one symptom. A
| holistic approach would likely implement plenty of small
| partial solutions.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Doing nothing is OFTEN the best solution to problems!
|
| Politicians generally don't understand this. Average
| people don't understand this. But it's still true.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It seems like free therapy would help with all of this?
| Therapy is part of free health care in other countries if
| I recall. Also free health care would help prevent people
| from ending up in dire straits.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This reminds me of the "This is fine" cartoon by KC
| Green[1]. Therapy treats the symptoms and not the cause
| of societal problems.
|
| I do agree that therapy and free healthcare would help
| and are needed, but alone they are not a solution.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11592622/this-is-
| fine-meme...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| So we both agree therapy and healthcare would help. I did
| not say they are the only thing we need to do.
| adolph wrote:
| > It's also politics. If you actually wanted to solve the
| problem
|
| The pairing of politics to problem is a challenge in that
| solving a problem means shifting focus to a different
| problem set. A different problem set will likely emerge a
| different politics which is effectively a threat to the
| people engaged in the current politics.
| seph-reed wrote:
| What if -- and I know this is a crazy idea -- but what if
| there was some sort of metric beyond popularity by which
| things were reported? Maybe even decided?
|
| For instance: if there was a free online study (in person
| test) "critical thinking" series of classes, where you could
| become accredited as a person who knows at least the basics
| of how lying works, statistics can be manipulated, science is
| hard, etc, etc, etc... if you had that credential, it could
| be included in stats.
|
| "While 85% of people say they're really worried about X, only
| 12% of critical-thinking accredited citizens consider it
| something worth focusing on."
| Sevii wrote:
| Sure but then politics becomes about controlling what's on
| those tests.
| seph-reed wrote:
| That's a good thing.
|
| Having a giant political flamewar about how critical
| thinking should work has good potential to result in
| mutual destruction.
|
| If you really play it out in your head, critical thinking
| is pretty hard to abuse because it tends to lean away
| from blind trust.
|
| Every trick that could be taught to get people not to
| trust your enemy, is one less way you can take advantage
| of them yourself.
| abnipl wrote:
| I have my doubts. People can learn "critical thinking
| skills" all they want, it's the failure to apply them
| fairly that breaks political discourse at all levels of
| education.
|
| People don't investigate statements that conform to their
| biases. And if the statement is something they _don't_
| want to believe, people will deploy the full force of
| their "critical thinking" toolkit to fight it, while
| allowing themselves to become vulnerable to all sorts of
| fallacies and cognitive blinders as long as it only
| obscures the inconvenient facts.
| silverscania wrote:
| That would be great, but it would be gamed so badly.
|
| Like those lists of "over 500 scientists have signed a
| document saying 5G is harmful to health so it must be
| true". When actually half of the people on the list aren't
| real people and the rest of them are political
| scientologists, dentists and people who know absolutely
| nothing about radio waves.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Hopefully, anyone who had taken even introductory
| critical-thinking would recognize what was going on there
| and throw the article out.
|
| If the worry is, "this is one more way to convince non-
| critical people of things," I'm pretty sure that's a lost
| cause to begin with.
| vowelless wrote:
| > For example, guns. Very few people die because of mass
| shootings.
|
| Adjusted for how armed Americans are, gun violence in this
| country is tiny. And seeing what an armed citizenry can do
| against the full American force (Afghanistan), an armed
| population is a necessity against tyranny in America.
| ineptech wrote:
| The assumption that the armed population and the forces
| trying to impose tyranny will be on opposite sides is
| looking pretty tenuous.
| pklausler wrote:
| As well as the assumption that the kind of weaponry
| available to the population is effective against that
| available to the "tyrants".
| da_chicken wrote:
| We just spent 20 years in Afghanistan proving how
| effective and potent a modern military is against
| guerilla tactics. I think it's become pretty clear that
| if you're not willing to ignore the generally accepted
| rules of engagement, they will just outlast you.
| godelski wrote:
| Not to mention the Vietnam war or any of the other wars
| we've been involved with in the Middle East. Not to
| mention drug cartels in Mexico and Latin/South America.
|
| I'm not sure how anyone can argue that a population with
| weapons can't hold off a tyrannical government. It is the
| same reason Marx said that under no means should we
| disarm the populous. I think people often forget that a
| government can't just kill all its population. Not only
| can you not rule over the dead but you also are going to
| have a hard time interacting in global trade (thanks
| globalism, but this even held true in the 1700's). It is
| kinda odd that this sentiment also often comes out of a
| country where some farmers fought off the country with
| the biggest navy and had an empire so great that the sun
| never set on it. Civil wars are extremely costly to
| countries. Also I'm not sure why everyone thinks that
| people from the military (including generals and entire
| battalions) wouldn't defect. That's also pretty common
| when looking at history.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| The ongoing and ramped up tyrannies don't affect the people
| with guns, so it's not doing much good so far. When the
| oppressed arm themselves, people who claim opposition to
| gun control suddenly become very pro-gun control.
| pope_meat wrote:
| It was all guns rights until the black panthers started
| arming up, and all the sudden it was "perhaps some
| sensible limits might be wise"
|
| Pretty hard to miss the intent.
|
| Arm the homeless is what I say when I'm feeling spicy.
| Clubber wrote:
| Yup, California was an open carry state until the GOP
| assemblyman Mulford and GOP Governor Ronald Reagan signed
| the Mulford Act into law banning the legal carry of
| loaded firearms. History is indeed stranger than fiction.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
|
| _the bill was crafted with the goal of disarming members
| of the Black Panther Party who were conducting armed
| patrols of Oakland neighborhoods, in what would later be
| termed copwatching.[1][2] They garnered national
| attention after Black Panthers members, bearing arms,
| marched upon the California State Capitol to protest the
| bill._
| collegeburner wrote:
| Very pro-2A people agree that gun control is racist
| though. Mainstream republican party (what people think of
| as pro-2a) isnt very. Trump implemented bump stock
| restrictions, hell, reagan signed 86 new machine gun ban.
| If you talk to very pro-2a people you will hear them
| agree that armed minorities are harder to oppress; gun
| control is indeed very racist going back to army/navy
| laws and other restrictions on former slaves owning arms.
| [deleted]
| lostapathy wrote:
| This shouldn't be downvoted - the roots of control in the
| US are absolutely rooted in this kind of racism, whether
| it be "modern" gun control as mentioned by parent, or the
| Sullivan Act over a hundred years ago.
| splitstud wrote:
| Why shouldn't it? It's a complete and total fabrication
| used to smear a segment of the population.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Yeah armed black militias marching through white suburban
| America will get the FBI interested.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The highest death rate in 2019 is Alaska (TIL) with 24.4
| deaths per 100,000 people. The lowest is Massachusetts with
| 3.4 deaths per 100,000 people.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality
| /...
|
| There is approx. 393,000,000 firearms owned by civilians in
| the US. About 60% of all adult firearm deaths are by
| suicide.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership
|
| Handguns accounted for 91% of firearm homicides.
|
| https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-
| the-u.s.-...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Pea shooters will allow you to stop the US Army on home
| soil? They have total information awareness, tanks,
| space/air power, snipers, GPS bombs, etc.
|
| Afghanistan was lost because of our tolerance of corruption
| and intolerance for spending money on a speck of dirt.
| Oppression of the US will be far more worth the money to a
| tyranny.
|
| If the second amendment actually said what gun people say
| it does (literalist/"strict constructionalist"), then I can
| use these arms as well:
|
| - grenades?
|
| - bazookas?
|
| - artillery?
|
| - explosives?
|
| - chemical weapons?
|
| - biological weapons?
|
| - nuclear/dirtynuke weapons?
|
| Where are you, as an apparently ardent 2nd amendment person
| likely living in at least a suburban population density
| comfortable with allowing your fellow Americans to arm
| themselves with?
|
| At somewhere along that chain, almost all non-crazy 2nd
| amendment people "nope out" of allowing those arms. Maybe
| your typical gun rights person would allow grenades, MAYBE
| bazookas.
|
| Major explosives or anything else? Nope.
|
| But you'd need to get to the chem/bio/nuke arms to have any
| real deterrent to the US Army.
|
| Your pea shooter militia is a fantasy. The US army has more
| than cannons, horses, and muskets now.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
| security of a free State, the right of the people to keep
| and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
|
| That's the whole thing. I think the most literal
| interpretation is that people have a right to bear arms,
| and you cant infringe that, by telling them they can't
| bear any arms. Obviously reasonable people will differ
| here, but I don't think it's fair to say that it
| unambiguously grants the right to bear any kind of arms
| at all.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| At the time of writing, "Arms" was muskets.
|
| So you've already stated that it isn't reasonable to
| allow the other "arms". So why is anything more than a
| single shot barrel-loaded rifle allowed?
|
| Of course the reason is that there is a massive industry
| in making guns and a rabid source of people that can be
| scared into buying their wares. The reason the laws are
| the way they are is because of the economics of the lobby
| and not any principle.
| maxwell wrote:
| What about e.g.
| https://wryheat.wordpress.com/2018/03/14/multi-shot-
| assault-... ?
|
| It's unreasonable to restrict ownership of arms unless
| you want to restrict violence to the government and
| organized criminals, which the founders most certainly
| did not intend.
|
| Police killed more Americans in 2019 than mass shooters,
| how can you make an argument in favor of the cops and
| courts controlling weaponry? Did you miss the police
| brutality protests last summer?
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| I'm not a citizen of the US so I don't really have a
| horse in this race (about "gun rights") but I am curious
| about your comment. I don't understand how the right to
| bear arms has kept police from killing any Americans in
| 2019 and how it will keep them from killing more in 2021.
| Can you explain?
|
| I also don't understand how citizens of the US are meant
| to protect themselves against police with the weapons
| they're free to carry. Is the idea that US citizens are
| going to use their weapons to resist the police from
| arresting them? Isn't that just going to cause no end of
| bloodshed?
| splitstud wrote:
| The right is codified law. It is not up to citizens to
| argue this. It is up to to those who need to control
| others to make these arguments. Yours are hncompelling,
| and have been swatted away by courts for decades.
| t-writescode wrote:
| The guns that Lewis and Clark used on their expedition
| were decidedly quite fast firing. Yes, it was short after
| the 2nd Amendment and certainly in the founders' sites of
| possible.
| maxwell wrote:
| The 18th century "regulated" means "well trained" today.
| What implies that any restrictions on the type of arms
| which may be possessed would be Constitutional? Where is
| the ambiguity outside of misunderstanding the
| contemporary meaning of "regulated"? "Bearing" doesn't
| mean using/firing weapons, of course, it's about
| preventing any authority from monopolizing violence.
|
| Certainly the founders--you know, the violent,
| enlightened revolutionaries who lead the first colonial
| overthrow in history--wouldn't have favored limiting
| certain arms to only thugs of a future tyrannical
| government. Why would they write the first Constitution
| in history to enable future state-sponsored goons to
| persecute the people of the United States?
|
| After _McDonald v. Chicago_ , no restrictions on arms
| appear Constitutional (hence the collapse of intrastate
| weapon laws over the past decade), except, I suppose, as
| punishment for a crime due to the 13th.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| The United States Constitution was not "the first
| constitution in history". For earlier, famous, instances
| of actual "constitutions" rather than codes of law (such
| as that of Urukagina of Lagash) see for example Solon's
| constitution of ancient Athens:
|
| _The Solonian Constitution was created by Solon in the
| early 6th century BC.[1] At the time of Solon the
| Athenian State was almost falling to pieces in
| consequence of dissensions between the parties into which
| the population was divided. Solon wanted to revise or
| abolish the older laws of Draco. Solon promulgated a code
| of laws embracing the whole of public and private life,
| the salutary effects[2] of which lasted long after the
| end of his constitution._
|
| _Under Solon 's reforms, all debts were abolished and
| all debt-slaves were freed. The status of the hectemoroi
| (the "one-sixth workers"), who farmed in an early form of
| serfdom, was also abolished. These reforms were known as
| the Seisachtheia.[3] Solon's constitution reduced the
| power of the old aristocracy by making wealth rather than
| birth a criterion for holding political positions, a
| system called timokratia (timocracy). Citizens were also
| divided based on their land production:
| Pentacosiomedimnoi, Hippeis, Zeugitae, and Thetes.[4] The
| lower assembly was given the right to hear appeals, and
| Solon also created the higher assembly. Both of these
| were meant to decrease the power of the Areopagus, the
| aristocratic council. The only parts of Draco's code that
| Solon kept were the laws regarding homicide. The
| constitution was written as poetry, and as soon as it was
| introduced, Solon went into self-imposed exile for 10
| years so he would not be tempted to take power as a
| tyrant._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solonian_Constitution
|
| See also Aristotle's "Constitution of Athens", on the
| constitutions of Athens, Sparta and Thebes, and with a
| title that makes it clear that "constitution" was an
| established term at least since Aristotle's times.
|
| Finally see wikipedia's article on pre-modern
| constitutions:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#Pre-
| modern_consti...
|
| Modern constitutions:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#Modern_constit
| uti...
|
| And (modern) democratic constitutions:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#Democratic_con
| sti...
|
| For more examples of constitutions before the United
| States Constitution.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The way the US government works today is VERY different
| from the government setup by the founders. Trying to
| divine what they would and wouldn't have wanted
| (understanding that they were all over the board on
| opinions) isn't a useful exercise.
|
| The founders didn't want a federal military, they wanted
| each state to run their own military.
|
| The founders didn't want a strong federal government,
| they wanted to states to be highly sovereign.
|
| The founders put in the bill of rights to limit the
| federal government's actions, not state government
| actions.
|
| The government completely changed after the civil war
| with the 14th amendment. The constitution was written
| primarily to limit the powers of the federal government.
| States were free to put, for example, requirements on
| religion to run for office.
|
| McDonald v. Chicago would have been appalling to the
| founders, because it's the federal government trampling
| over the rights of a state government.
| Tostino wrote:
| Mustard gas for the masses!
|
| Absolutely agreed though, it's a very internally
| inconsistent viewpoint from my perspective.
| babyshake wrote:
| Your chances of dying in a mass shooting may be very small,
| but it doesn't take a large number of shootings to start
| affecting our lives. For example, events like First Friday in
| Oakland have been essentially cancelled indefinitely and most
| public events have large numbers of heavily armed police
| standing around and getting paid for overtime.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| But then the thing causing the damage isn't actually the
| shootings, it's the reaction to them.
|
| It's the same thing as the War on Terror. The enemy in the
| War on Terror is Terror, i.e. Fear. The only way to win the
| War on Terror is to overcome your fear and not sacrifice
| your principles because you're afraid.
|
| The British had it in the 20th Century. Stiff upper lip. Or
| you'll do more damage to yourself than the enemy can.
| ksdale wrote:
| But is this essentially like arguing that terrorism
| justifies all of the security theater at the airport?
| clairity wrote:
| guns have a tendency to escalate violence and harm (vs. say,
| fists), which is a real problem, but yes, the focus on
| terrorism and mass shootings is entirely unjustified vis-a-
| vis guns and gun policy. suicide by gun (20-30K/yr) happens
| twice as often as homicide (10-15K/yr), and non-fatal injury
| rates are ~3 times the fatality rate (80-100K/yr). almost
| none of those involve terrorism or mass shooting (combined,
| on the order of 100/yr).
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| What's interesting is how all these policies focus on banning
| legal guns.
|
| Now, try asking in a debate the proportion of crimes
| committed with legal weapons vs illegal weapons and watch
| your opponent start dancing around the question! Good luck
| getting a straight answer.
| dmwallin wrote:
| All these "illegal" guns started their life as brand-new
| perfectly legal firearms. It's a very leaky pipeline, one
| in which the industry and industry funded lobby groups have
| at least a bit of a mixed incentive to solve. The vast
| majority of the proposed gun-control laws focus on
| tightening up the leakiest parts of the supply chain, or on
| reducing the overall demand for various firearms.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > All these "illegal" guns started their life as brand-
| new perfectly legal firearms.
|
| Citation needed here. Especially in the south.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Which is probably why the US stopped reporting on the
| percentage of gun crime committed with legally versus
| illegally obtained firearms in 2004. I bet the data is
| available, but you'd have to comb through court records
| yourself.
|
| Even at that point, "legally obtained" still included
| borrowing one from a friend or family member.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Which is probably why the US stopped reporting on the
| percentage of gun crime committed with legally versus
| illegally obtained firearms in 2004
|
| That's interesting! Why would they hide such stats?
| nmca wrote:
| I think Taleb has a point on this topic - the concern is about
| a forecasted growth rate, not about the current rate.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dKiLclupUM
| heavyset_go wrote:
| In my opinion, this is just statistics worship, and is not
| unlike a form of utilitarianism. Murder rates are low, but we
| spend an incredible amount of resources preventing,
| investigating, prosecuting, imprisoning and executing
| murderers, even those who have murdered just one person.
|
| While I have significant grievances with the US justice and
| prison system, I'm okay with expending disproportionate
| resources to ensure that people don't take others' lives just
| because they want to or feel entitled to.
| elnino74 wrote:
| Not sure how you make such a dashboard when the expensive
| prevention measures affect the number of deaths. I think you
| are looking for number of deaths if the prevention measures
| weren't in place, but i'm not sure how you could arrive to that
| number accurately.
| ctrlp wrote:
| The obvious purpose of removing shoes at airports has long been
| more about security theater than safety. The authorities must be
| seen to be doing something to protect travelers or the industry
| might not survive the customer's perception of danger.
|
| But, the less obvious reasons surely include maintaining the
| function of the huge TSA security apparatus put in place after
| 9/11. The stated function of the TSA is to protect passengers
| from attack. The unstated (and unacknowledged function) that has
| perpetuated the practice despite every traveler hating it (and
| its obvious futility), is to intimidate travelers and provide a
| convenient mechanism of crowd-control. Step out of line
| (literally) and you will be treated as a potential criminal.
| There needn't be an official policy to do so, the benefits of the
| system ensure its continuance via other (stated) motives, not
| least the profit motive of the supporting economic interests. The
| upshot is that travelling via plane in the past 20 years is one
| of the many small lessons for living in the security/surveillance
| state. You must obey. Moreover, we see the logic of the
| security/surveillance state incorporating this convenient control
| mechanism by now restricting (or implicitly threatening to
| restrict, which is even better) the travel of domestic
| antagonists of power. If we had discontinued taking off our
| shoes, the symbolic effect of dispiriting and weakening the
| public (literally making us vulnerable in our unshod feet) would
| be unavailable now. Why would the administration willingly
| relinquish such a useful tool for managing the population? Of
| course it wouldn't. It would we more amazing if it had.
|
| Now, we will likely add further controls on travel in the form of
| digital health passports with infinitely more possibility for
| government mischief. When/if the pandemic ends, do you believe
| the passports will be discontinued?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > The unstated (and unacknowledged function) that has
| perpetuated the practice despite every traveler hating it (and
| its obvious futility), is to intimidate travelers and provide a
| convenient mechanism of crowd-control.
|
| I think you're misguided here. I certainly do understand the
| viewpoint that this security theater is harmful (and agree,
| actually). But lets be honest: The TSA has nothing to do with
| "Scaring the sheep" and everything to do with "Politically
| acceptable jobs program".
|
| Way too many soldiers coming home from our senseless oversea
| wars? Great - put them to work "Guarding" our airports. Super
| convenient that all states have airports that will "need" these
| jobs, so it's easier to pass than targeted jobs programs that
| would actually be useful.
| ctrlp wrote:
| What percentage of TSA employees are former military?
| Arainach wrote:
| More than 25% as of 2015.
|
| https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/features/2015/12/01/tsa-
| looks...
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I looked and I can't actually find a good answer to that.
|
| I do know that the job requirements are basically:
|
| 1. US citizen
|
| 2. High school diploma
|
| 3. 18+ years old
|
| 4. Pass drug/background screening
|
| For the pay, the job requirements are very low. They also
| follow the "Veterans preference" practice during hiring.
| This is actually pretty typical across many government jobs
| (See https://www.usajobs.gov/).
|
| My experience with trying to apply to these jobs
| (admittedly second hand, watching my wife apply to meet
| grant-related conditions) is that if you're an honorably
| discharged veteran, your resume goes into bucket #1, and if
| they can fill the position from that bucket, they won't
| even look at bucket #2, which is public applications.
| Craighead wrote:
| What a fantastic example of a superiority complex.
| cujo wrote:
| > Now, we will likely add further controls on travel in the
| form of digital health passports with infinitely more
| possibility for government mischief.
|
| How do you see digital health passports as having infinitely
| more possibility for govt mischief? Right now TSA has the
| ability to treat you like a criminal if they think you looked
| at them funny.
|
| The health passport "mischief" seems more along the lines of
| "you don't have vaccine X, so you can't board the plane." While
| potentially problematic, that's kind of the end of it. It
| becomes a no-fly list, but one where you can actually control
| your status on it.
| itchyjunk wrote:
| Is it under your control? Say you do have the vaccines but
| get to the airport and find out you are on a no fly list. Is
| that issue trivially easy to fix? From some of the post I've
| read here, it's a black box system with very little standard
| process to help you get out of it. Filing law suite isn't
| easy[0].
|
| [0] https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/michigan-father-
| wrongly-...
| pessimizer wrote:
| It certainly may be, but it doesn't inherently have to be.
| Kids need vaccinations to go to school (I mean pre-
| Wakefield and that blond lady from Playboy who married a
| Backstreet Boy whose name escapes me), the way you proved
| it was to show your documents that you got from your
| doctor.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Jenny McCarthy?
| ctrlp wrote:
| Well, YOU may not have a problem complying with every
| government mandated health intervention required of you to
| travel, but others might. Oddly, lots of people on HN seem
| not to view compulsion as a form of force when it's cloaked
| in paternalism, while at the same time believing the most
| indirect forms of social influence as oppressive forms of
| institutional violence if the 'right' people are impacted.
|
| Putting that aside, it's fairly obvious given the human
| taboos concerning disease that if you have a mechanism for
| flagging a person as non-compliant with a health policy, that
| person is effectively tagged as diseased by implication. This
| is a convenient way to unperson members of a political class
| who are non-compliant with the policy (e.g., for
| personal/political/scientific/ethical/religious reasons). You
| needn't eliminate the enemy when their opposition to your
| power is embodied in their non-compliance. You merely need to
| make them compliant to eliminate their opposition.
| [deleted]
| cartoonworld wrote:
| The nature of the informal implementation of this stuff
| renders it so toothless, enforcement in whatever form we may
| see will be pretty permeable. The current CDC cards are
| trivial to print out on basically any laser printer. ("I have
| a heart condition so I can't", "heres a picture on my
| phone"). If you don't have a vaccine you probably just will
| need to have a test and a temp. screening for the most part.
|
| However the comparison to TSA is not apt. TSA threat model
| is: One "terrorist" (though I'd call them "premeditated mass
| murderers") executing its plan is the total failure. For the
| vaccine requirements, the threat model is much different.
| Even if you just don't bother with any of this stuff on %5 of
| flights, it will still have a great impact in reducing the
| frequency of aerospace super-spreader events.
|
| Sars-CoV-2 infects a lot of people every day, whereas there
| are many, many days in a row where no terrorists bother to
| board a domestic flight.
| dntrkv wrote:
| > Why would the administration willingly relinquish such a
| useful tool for managing the population?
|
| Who is this administration?
| ctrlp wrote:
| The State
| aceki wrote:
| > The safety protocols have managed to protect airports and
| planes from further attack...
|
| Sorry, but no. The DHS performed a study on the TSA's
| effectiveness[0], finding that the TSA missed concealed weapons,
| explosives, and other contraband 95% of the time. The reason the
| shoe bomber[1], underwear bomber[2], and the UA 93 hijacking[3]
| were unsuccessful was because of the passengers and crew on the
| flight. The TSA did nothing.
|
| A TSA tactic that isn't as well known is the TSA SPOT program[4].
| Basically, TSA agents stand around in the airport looking for
| "suspicious" activity which naturally leads to profiling
| (particularly for those of Middle Eastern descent). A score card
| from the program has been leaked[5], and with the sort of
| criteria on it, it would be easy to justify searching anyone at
| the airport.
|
| This is speculation, but I suspect that giving passengers a false
| sense of security would make them less likely to notice an
| attempted hijacking, bombing, or whatever else. But at least
| they'll be more comfortable, right?
|
| [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-
| breaches-...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_shoe_bomb_attempt
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_253
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPOT_(TSA_program)
|
| [5] https://www.papersplease.org/wp/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/03/s...
| gridder wrote:
| And what about the stupid ban on liquids? This is even more
| nonsensical... Sure the airports shops are happy though. IIRC is
| related to a Heathrow 2006 attack...
| yalogin wrote:
| The TSA is just a huge scam to siphon money and they need to show
| they are providing value. Taking shoes off is that value, so yeah
| it's never going away. We could get out of Afghanistan but will
| never get rid of the TSA.
| p_l wrote:
| TSA continued existence means lower insurance premiums for
| airlines, iirc.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I had a friend fly to a his grandfather's funeral a few years
| ago, threw all of his kit into a travel bag and ran to the
| airport. The kit his grandfather passed down to him: kilt,
| jacket, belt and spooran ...
|
| A 18" dirk from the 1800s ...
|
| Made it through security without anyone saying anything and
| only remembered when it clanked as he put it into the overhead
| luggage compartment.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It's all incompetent theatre. I remember around 2006 or 2007
| snaking through a terribly managed security line in ATL taking
| off my shoes, doing all the questions and scanning and pat
| downs and irradiation and getting through and then some random
| person shouted "did someone drop their passport?" and realizing
| it was mine and my passport had fallen out of my bag. So I call
| back "yep, I did" and it gets handed to me by said random
| person (who hadn't passed screening yet), with nobody in TSA
| even batting an eyelash or checking to verify that I didn't
| just grab someone else's passport (or taken something else of
| security concern.)
|
| Meanwhile I remember flying through Frankfurt in 1994 and
| opening my (inspected before baggage drop) suitcase briefly to
| move something and getting pulled politely aside and my items
| re-inspected. Security policies that made sense and were
| executed competently by respectful and well-trained staff.
|
| Since 9/11 I just try to avoid flying to or from the US
| entirely.
| refurb wrote:
| Haha... nope.
|
| I had a friend bring 1L containers of liquid through security
| in Europe and no one said a word. The limit was 100mL. Nobody
| was looking at the scanner.
|
| Don't fool yourself.
| camillomiller wrote:
| Well, just before the pandemic I flew through Frankfurt,
| Milan and Berlin Tegel forgetting about the Leatherman knife
| in my backpack's side pocket. I noticed it only when I was
| back home after my flight back.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Taking shoes off is that value, so yeah it's never going
| away.
|
| REMOVE_SHOES is one in probably a thousand settings in TSA's
| airport security makefile. Like all makefiles of any
| complexity, the trick is separating out the bona fide settings
| from the mountains of ineffectual ones that disappear somewhere
| deep in the nasty bowl of bureaucratic spaghetti.
|
| As programmers, we should all inherently understand the value
| in _not touching_ that goddamned mess unless someone really
| understands what they are doing. Even then, that almost always
| involves building a new system that runs in parallel to the
| spaghetti so that the "no touching" rule is obeyed at all
| times.
|
| That's not to say TSA isn't a mess. It's just when I imagine
| what Libertarian International airport security looks like, the
| one thing I'm certain of is that they have set the
| RANDOMIZED_SCREENING flag incorrectly.
| jpxw wrote:
| Maybe. I think at least part of the reason is political though.
|
| Nobody wants to be the person who scraps a security policy and
| then has a terrorist attack happen as a result of their policy
| removal. Not politicians, not TSA higher-ups, nobody. That's a
| career-ending mistake, no matter how unlikely it may be.
|
| Not to mention that it's probably not a particularly popular
| decision amongst the public. Maybe it's security theatre, but
| people like it.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| I think it'd be pretty easy politically, at least from a
| conservative (i.e. not Republican) standpoint. Argue that DHS
| is government waste and can't stop shit (point to the
| numerous studies done over the years of them being able to
| stop all kinds of shit from going through). Let things go
| back to the way they were: airports hiring private firms to
| do security.
|
| This would never happen in today's climate though since both
| parties are pro-big government.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I wonder what the angle for this article is. They interview a
| member of the Heritage Foundation, a 'think tank' heavily funded
| by conservatives and the oil industry whose more controversial
| efforts are climate change denial, vote fraud claims and
| opposition of critical race theory.
| murgindrag wrote:
| Stereotype much?
| hourislate wrote:
| WE should all be grateful they still allow us to wear our
| underwear while going through these security check points.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab
|
| Most of this screening is to avoid profiling. It would be
| considered politically not correct if we were to just screen
| Muslims so Grand Pa who received the Medal of Honor in WWII, has
| to be stripped searched after they get him out of the wheel
| chair.
| tawaysdfas4 wrote:
| Ummm yeah, so guys like these can get into the airport?
| https://youtu.be/NWNyxDUSriA?t=40 This just happened last week.
| It probably happens every week. Since the attacker is white, we
| dont classify it as terror. If the person were Muslim, he'd be
| in prison already.
|
| Firstly, we already profile Muslims extensively. Secondly, a
| non Muslim person with guns, usually motivated by
| GOP/church/nation regularly commits atrocities, there is a news
| article like every other week.
|
| Apologists like you like to look the other way.
| hourislate wrote:
| Ummm, there is a big difference between raging and trying to
| blow up an aircraft.
|
| If the 911 bombers started fist fights in the airport lobby
| instead of hijacking airplanes, I'm sure we wouldn't be
| living with the heighten security apparatus we have today.
| Can you list the race or religion of all the terrorists who
| tried to bring down an aircraft 911 to present day, just
| curious? I think you're the apologist in this case.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You do realize ISIS or Al Qaeda can just find a white
| convert to send through? Or that there are white Muslims to
| begin with (Balkans)?
| mostertoaster wrote:
| What will the headline be 20 years in the future: "20 years after
| covid, will we ever ...."
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Honestly, I am ok with bullshit TSA because it will help make
| long distance train travel more attractive in the US.
|
| Relatedly, I want someone to write a dark comedy set like 20
| years hence where a bunch of airline execs, worried about their
| shrinking industry and some shiny new rail, band together to pay
| off some terrorist to blow up a moving train so train stations
| gets TSA security theater.
|
| Without the movie, I worry due to some stupid accident the rail
| TSA might actually happen!
| durpleDrank wrote:
| I think the worry about these vaccine phone apps that track and
| trace is related.
| quelsolaar wrote:
| I used to think security theater (like taking off your shoes) was
| the dumbest thing ever. Then I realized that Terrorism is
| "Insecurity theater". Its designed to make you feel unsafe. It is
| statistically not at likely to hurt you, and the people who do it
| are rare, you but its designed to scare you in to thinking you
| are under some massive threat by an army of people who can and do
| strike at anytime. Its psychological warfare. So how do you fight
| against that? You make people go through security theater to make
| them think they are safe! We beat the terrorists, not when there
| are no terror incidents, but when no one is afraid of them. Fear
| is the enemy. If forcing people to taking off their shoes makes
| some people feel safe flying, then it is an effective anti
| terrorist measure.
| kleiba wrote:
| That's exactly why it is called "terror-ism".
| gelotar wrote:
| Who is empowered when the masses are swallowed by fear? It is
| not some hooded maniac rubbing his hands together in his
| basement. It is the state, which maintains control. Control is
| maintained by fear; fear is engineered through psychological
| warfare. When did the state ever insruct us to stop fearing
| "terror"? Machiavelli wrote all about this.
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