As someone who travels all the time for work, combined with all the reported tests where people smuggled pretty much anything they wanted onboard, this is no surprise.
No proof airport security makes flying safer:study
Airport security lines can annoy passengers, but there is no evidence that they make flying any safer, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
A team at the Harvard School of Public Health could not find any studies showing whether the time-consuming process of X-raying carry-on luggage prevents hijackings or attacks.
They also found no evidence to suggest that making passengers take off their shoes and confiscating small items prevented any incidents.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration told research teams requesting information their need for quick new security measures trumped the usefulness of evaluating them, Eleni Linos, Elizabeth Linos, and Graham Colditz reported in the British Medical Journal.
“Can you hide anything in your shoes that you cannot hide in your underwear?” they asked.
Check out the TSA website to find out what they think they’re doing.
oh great.. I’m going to take a flight saturday. And because of all the airport security you need to get there at least 1 hour before your flight.
Terrorists will just resort to bus terminals and hijack greyhounds, since there’s zero security there.
“Can you hide anything in your shoes that you cannot hide in your underwear?”
Stop asking questions!.. Now they’ll make me take off my underwear while in line.
That picture is a prefect example of why Political Correctness is ruining the country. Everyone knows that 70+ male WW2 veterans are as suspicious as 20 something middle eastern males in terms of terror suspects.
#2 – You’re not supposed to remove your underwear before checking in? They make me do it everytime, that’s why I love to fly!
Like duh! Did anybody think these measures made you safer? I and everyone I knew thought it was another load of bull crap from the government to make us feel better.
Why do we have to X-ray our shoes when what you really need to do (if you’re serious) is test them for explosive residue. Hiding explosives in one’s shoes, after all, is what spurred on the indignity of having to take off one’s shoes. But of course then all you need to do is hide the explosive pair in your carry on luggage and switch pairs after the security checkpoint.
Box cutters? Who needs box cutters? Just use a pen. It’d give you about the same attacking power. It’s all about whether you can scare the crew and passengers enough to do what you say, not what kind of sharp stick you use. That said, who’s going to take you seriously if you wave around nail clippers?
Regardless, Americans have learned their lesson. Nobody is going to sit there while some idiot threatens to knife the flight attendant. We’ve already seen at least one instance of this since 9/11, and the guy got his ass beat within an inch of his life.
The terrorists have moved on to other ideas. They knew they used up their surprise points after the fourth hijacked plane failed to make it to it’s target.
“This is the most tested workforce that I know of in the United States, and it uses the best technology, and I have to say they are the best in the world at what they do.”
Kip Hawley, testifying before House Homeland Security Committee
November 14, 2007
Good Grief Charlie Brown!! I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry.
The whole thing is stupid, especially the liquids and shoes. They have never and will never find anything dangerous in shoes. They have never and will never find any dangerous liquids.
As for blades…the metal cover on a floppy disk can easily be made razor-sharp. Straighten it out, drag it through one of those Ginsu sharpeners, and attach it to a handle of some sort. You can do this in your seat. Stupid-simple. The armed air marshals are the best protection.
Great, now we can’t have floppies on an airplane. Thanks jerk!
Yes. Airport security is completely worthless. Well, 98.99% worthless. Every study and ‘attempt’ to trick or bypass these security measure show that you can…fairly easily. If someone really wanted to plan and attack a flight, these measures (taking off shoes, baggage screening) wouldn’t stop them. NO ONE will hijack a plane again, at least not successfully. Understand that. It will never happen again. Since 9/11, no passengers will sit back and assume the plan will be ‘taken’ to some spot and landed and negotiated over. If anyone tries to hijack again, they’ll be rushed and killed. I’d feel JUST as safe to walk on a plane with no security screen at all, as this joke of a ‘feel good’ screening we have now.
Of course it isn’t for “security.” It is to establish and reinforce who the masters are.
I love the story a TSA woman in Vegas told me about Penn Gillette. The TSA hates him because he wears a studded jock-strap that, of course, sets off all the alarms and forces them to have him strip.
The liquids and shoes probably only worked the last time around. They have caught people doing both of those things.
The question as to whether it makes us safer is is the wrong one, it is whether it is worth the cost.
That it makes us safer is true since without it, people could get on with shoe bombs, etc. Or perhaps we should just remove the metal detectors too?
I hate to break it to the naysayers, but there is no scientific proof that parachutes work. Have you seen any double blind studies where the researchers chuck people out of airplanes without knowing what they are testing or the test subjects knowing? I haven’t but I feel pretty good about wearing a parachute if I were to jump out of a plane. Same here. If there was zero security, we would have problems. I hate the screening as much as the next guy, but it is in fact needed.
All of this “security” is a feel good….
My vote is to arm the passengers. Costs would be less, and the risks only slightly higher….
‘Course getting up to use the bathroom may be a little risky in the aircraft, but….
Regards,
Stu.
But if the goal were to just blow up the plane, then of course hijackers can succeed. Most likely that cannot be stopped, and the security measures should be dropped to a considerable extent.
That should have been an exclamation mark instead of a question mark.
Didn’t the government promise that after their coup d’état of airport security, flying would be safer?
The only people that seem to be making out are the security workers that use the skills learned at the Ted Kennedy passenger groping school. Drinks are extra, and don’t go near the water.
It isn’t security, it’s security theater.
MentalMidgetMikeN,
The liquids and shoes probably only worked the last time around. They have caught people doing both of those things.
Uummm, could you reference ONE time where someone downed a plane using liquids and shoes? Or even got caught? I know some lame brained idiot tried the shoe trick once but hadn’t thought it through.
If you want to find a model of Airport security, look to the Israeli airline El-Al. They haven’t had a hijacking since 1976.
They look in EVERY bag, they check everything, and the people doing it are experts and know all the tricks that psychos and terrorists use to hide stuff. And they also have secure cockpit doors (that would have stopped 9/11) and every flight has at least one armed air marshall.